But poor Rosa, in her secluded1 chamber2, could not have knownof whom or of what Cornelius was dreaming.
From what he had said she was more ready to believe that hedreamed of the black tulip than of her; and yet Rosa wasmistaken.
But as there was no one to tell her so, and as the words ofCornelius's thoughtless speech had fallen upon her heartlike drops of poison, she did not dream, but she wept.
The fact was, that, as Rosa was a high-spirited creature, ofno mean perception and a noble heart, she took a very clearand judicious3 view of her own social position, if not of hermoral and physical qualities.
Cornelius was a scholar, and was wealthy, -- at least he hadbeen before the confiscation4 of his property; Corneliusbelonged to the merchant-bourgeoisie, who were prouder oftheir richly emblazoned shop signs than the hereditarynobility of their heraldic bearings. Therefore, although hemight find Rosa a pleasant companion for the dreary5 hours ofhis captivity6, when it came to a question of bestowing7 hisheart it was almost certain that he would bestow8 it upon atulip, -- that is to say, upon the proudest and noblest offlowers, rather than upon poor Rosa, the jailer's lowlychild.
Thus Rosa understood Cornelius's preference of the tulip toherself, but was only so much the more unhappy therefor.
During the whole of this terrible night the poor girl didnot close an eye, and before she rose in the morning she hadcome to the resolution of making her appearance at thegrated window no more.
But as she knew with what ardent9 desire Cornelius lookedforward to the news about his tulip; and as, notwithstandingher determination not to see any more a man her pity forwhose fate was fast growing into love, she did not, on theother hand, wish to drive him to despair, she resolved tocontinue by herself the reading and writing lessons; and,fortunately, she had made sufficient progress to dispensewith the help of a master when the master was not to beCornelius.
Rosa therefore applied10 herself most diligently11 to readingpoor Cornelius de Witt's Bible, on the second fly leaf ofwhich the last will of Cornelius van Baerle was written.
"Alas12!" she muttered, when perusing13 again this document,which she never finished without a tear, the pearl of love,rolling from her limpid14 eyes on her pale cheeks -- "alas! atthat time I thought for one moment he loved me."Poor Rosa! she was mistaken. Never had the love of theprisoner been more sincere than at the time at which we arenow arrived, when in the contest between the black tulip andRosa the tulip had had to yield to her the first andforemost place in Cornelius's heart.
But Rosa was not aware of it.
Having finished reading, she took her pen, and began with aslaudable diligence the by far more difficult task ofwriting.
As, however, Rosa was already able to write a legible handwhen Cornelius so uncautiously opened his heart, she did notdespair of progressing quickly enough to write, after eightdays at the latest, to the prisoner an account of his tulip.
She had not forgotten one word of the directions given toher by Cornelius, whose speeches she treasured in her heart,even when they did not take the shape of directions.
He, on his part, awoke deeper in love than ever. The tulip,indeed, was still a luminous15 and prominent object in hismind; but he no longer looked upon it as a treasure to whichhe ought to sacrifice everything, and even Rosa, but as amarvellous combination of nature and art with which he wouldhave been happy to adorn16 the bosom17 of his beloved one.
Yet during the whole of that day he was haunted with a vagueuneasiness, at the bottom of which was the fear lest Rosashould not come in the evening to pay him her usual visit.
This thought took more and more hold of him, until at theapproach of evening his whole mind was absorbed in it.
How his heart beat when darkness closed in! The words whichhe had said to Rosa on the evening before and which had sodeeply afflicted18 her, now came back to his mind more vividlythan ever, and he asked himself how he could have told hisgentle comforter to sacrifice him to his tulip, -- that isto say, to give up seeing him, if need be, -- whereas to himthe sight of Rosa had become a condition of life.
In Cornelius's cell one heard the chimes of the clock of thefortress. It struck seven, it struck eight, it struck nine.
Never did the metal voice vibrate more forcibly through theheart of any man than did the last stroke, marking the ninthhour, through the heart of Cornelius.
All was then silent again. Cornelius put his hand on hisheart, to repress as it were its violent palpitation, andlistened.
The noise of her footstep, the rustling20 of her gown on thestaircase, were so familiar to his ear, that she had nosooner mounted one step than he used to say to himself, --"Here comes Rosa."This evening none of those little noises broke the silenceof the lobby, the clock struck nine, and a quarter; thehalf-hour, then a quarter to ten, and at last its deep toneannounced, not only to the inmates21 of the fortress19, but alsoto all the inhabitants of Loewestein, that it was ten.
This was the hour at which Rosa generally used to leaveCornelius. The hour had struck, but Rosa had not come.
Thus then his foreboding had not deceived him; Rosa, beingvexed, shut herself up in her room and left him to himself.
"Alas!" he thought, "I have deserved all this. She will comeno more, and she is right in staying away; in her place Ishould do just the same."Yet notwithstanding all this, Cornelius listened, waited,and hoped until midnight, then he threw himself upon thebed, with his clothes on.
It was a long and sad night for him, and the day brought nohope to the prisoner.
At eight in the morning, the door of his cell opened; butCornelius did not even turn his head; he had heard the heavystep of Gryphus in the lobby, but this step had perfectlysatisfied the prisoner that his jailer was coming alone.
Thus Cornelius did not even look at Gryphus.
And yet he would have been so glad to draw him out, and toinquire about Rosa. He even very nearly made this inquiry,strange as it would needs have appeared to her father. Totell the truth, there was in all this some selfish hope tohear from Gryphus that his daughter was ill.
Except on extraordinary occasions, Rosa never came duringthe day. Cornelius therefore did not really expect her aslong as the day lasted. Yet his sudden starts, his listeningat the door, his rapid glances at every little noise towardsthe grated window, showed clearly that the prisonerentertained some latent hope that Rosa would, somehow orother, break her rule.
At the second visit of Gryphus, Cornelius, contrary to allhis former habits, asked the old jailer, with the mostwinning voice, about her health; but Gryphus contentedhimself with giving the laconical answer, --"All's well."At the third visit of the day, Cornelius changed his formerinquiry: --"I hope nobody is ill at Loewestein?""Nobody," replied, even more laconically22, the jailer,shutting the door before the nose of the prisoner.
Gryphus, being little used to this sort of civility on thepart of Cornelius, began to suspect that his prisoner wasabout to try and bribe23 him.
Cornelius was now alone once more; it was seven o'clock inthe evening, and the anxiety of yesterday returned withincreased intensity24.
But another time the hours passed away without bringing thesweet vision which lighted up, through the grated window,the cell of poor Cornelius, and which, in retiring, leftlight enough in his heart to last until it came back again.
Van Baerle passed the night in an agony of despair. On thefollowing day Gryphus appeared to him even more hideous,brutal, and hateful than usual; in his mind, or rather inhis heart, there had been some hope that it was the old manwho prevented his daughter from coming.
In his wrath25 he would have strangled Gryphus, but would notthis have separated him for ever from Rosa?
The evening closing in, his despair changed into melancholy,which was the more gloomy as, involuntarily, Van Baerlemixed up with it the thought of his poor tulip. It was nowjust that week in April which the most experienced gardenerspoint out as the precise time when tulips ought to beplanted. He had said to Rosa, --"I shall tell you the day when you are to put the bulb inthe ground."He had intended to fix, at the vainly hoped for interview,the following day as the time for that momentous26 operation.
The weather was propitious27; the air, though still damp,began to be tempered by those pale rays of the April sunwhich, being the first, appear so congenial, although sopale. How if Rosa allowed the right moment for planting thebulb to pass by, -- if, in addition to the grief of seeingher no more, he should have to deplore28 the misfortune ofseeing his tulip fail on account of its having been plantedtoo late, or of its not having been planted at all!
These two vexations combined might well make him leave offeating and drinking.
This was the case on the fourth day.
It was pitiful to see Cornelius, dumb with grief, and palefrom utter prostration29, stretch out his head through theiron bars of his window, at the risk of not being able todraw it back again, to try and get a glimpse of the gardenon the left spoken of by Rosa, who had told him that itsparapet overlooked the river. He hoped that perhaps he mightsee, in the light of the April sun, Rosa or the tulip, thetwo lost objects of his love.
In the evening, Gryphus took away the breakfast and dinnerof Cornelius, who had scarcely touched them.
On the following day he did not touch them at all, andGryphus carried the dishes away just as he had brought them.
Cornelius had remained in bed the whole day.
"Well," said Gryphus, coming down from the last visit, "Ithink we shall soon get rid of our scholar."Rosa was startled.
"Nonsense!" said Jacob. "What do you mean?""He doesn't drink, he doesn't eat, he doesn't leave his bed.
He will get out of it, like Mynheer Grotius, in a chest,only the chest will be a coffin30."Rosa grew pale as death.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he is uneasy about his tulip."And, rising with a heavy heart, she returned to her chamber,where she took a pen and paper, and during the whole of thatnight busied herself with tracing letters.
On the following morning, when Cornelius got up to draghimself to the window, he perceived a paper which had beenslipped under the door.
He pounced31 upon it, opened it, and read the following words,in a handwriting which he could scarcely have recognized asthat of Rosa, so much had she improved during her shortabsence of seven days, --"Be easy; your tulip is going on well."Although these few words of Rosa's somewhat soothed32 thegrief of Cornelius, yet he felt not the less the irony33 whichwas at the bottom of them. Rosa, then, was not ill, she wasoffended; she had not been forcibly prevented from coming,but had voluntarily stayed away. Thus Rosa, being atliberty, found in her own will the force not to come and seehim, who was dying with grief at not having seen her.
Cornelius had paper and a pencil which Rosa had brought tohim. He guessed that she expected an answer, but that shewould not come before the evening to fetch it. He thereforewrote on a piece of paper, similar to that which he hadreceived, --"It was not my anxiety about the tulip that has made me ill,but the grief at not seeing you."After Gryphus had made his last visit of the day, anddarkness had set in, he slipped the paper under the door,and listened with the most intense attention, but he neitherheard Rosa's footsteps nor the rustling of her gown.
He only heard a voice as feeble as a breath, and gentle likea caress34, which whispered through the grated little windowin the door the word, --"To-morrow!"Now to-morrow was the eighth day. For eight days Corneliusand Rosa had not seen each other.
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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confiscation
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| n. 没收, 充公, 征收 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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7
bestowing
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| 砖窑中砖堆上层已烧透的砖 | |
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bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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13
perusing
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| v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的现在分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字） | |
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limpid
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| adj.清澈的，透明的 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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16
adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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22
laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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23
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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24
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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deplore
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| vt.哀叹，对...深感遗憾 | |
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29
prostration
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| n. 平伏, 跪倒, 疲劳 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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31
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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32
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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33
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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34
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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