ss, William, Prince of Orange, very likely afraid that
Van Baerle's blood would turn the scale of judgment against him, had
compassionately taken into consideration his good character, and the
apparent proofs of his innocence.

His Highness, accordingly, had granted him his life.

Cornelius at first hoped that the pardon would be complete, and that he
would be restored to his full liberty and to his flower borders at Dort.

But Cornelius was mistaken. To use an expression of Madame de Sevigne,
who wrote about the same time, "there was a postscript to the letter;"
and the most important part of the letter was contained in the
postscript.

In this postscript, William of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, condemned
Cornelius van Baerle to imprisonment for life. He was not sufficiently
guilty to suffer death, but he was too much so to be set at liberty.

Cornelius heard this clause, but, the first feeling of vexation and
disappointment over, he said to himself,--

"Never mind, all this is not lost yet; there is some good in this
perpetual imprisonment; Rosa will be there, and also my three bulbs of
the black tulip are there."

But Cornelius forgot that the Seven Provinces had seven prisons, one for
each, and that the board of the prisoner is anywhere else less expensive
than at the Hague, which is a capital.

His Highness, who, as it seems, did not possess the means to feed Van
Baerle at the Hague, sent him to undergo his perpetual imprisonment at
the fortress of Loewestein, very near Dort, but, alas! also very far
from it; for Loewestein, as the geographers tell us, is situated at the
point of the islet which is formed by the confluence of the Waal and the
Meuse, opposite Gorcum.

Van Baerle was sufficiently versed in the history of his country to know
that the celebrated Grotius was confined in that castle after the
death of Barneveldt; and that the States, in their generosity to the
illustrious publicist, jurist, historian, poet, and divine, had granted
to him for his daily maintenance the sum of twenty-four stivers.

"I," said Van Baerle to himself, "I am worth much less than Grotius.
They will hardly give me twelve stivers, and I shall live miserably; but
never mind, at all events I shall live."

Then suddenly a terrible thought struck him.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "how damp and misty that part of the country is,
and the soil so bad for the tulips! And then Rosa will not be at
Loewestein!"

Chapter 13. W