striking down this spiteful bully passed like lightning
through the brain of the tulip-fancier. The blood rushed to his brow,
and seemed like fire in his eyes, which blinded him, and he raised
in his two hands the heavy jug with all the now useless earth which
remained in it. One instant more, and he would have flung it on the bald
head of old Gryphus.

But a cry stopped him; a cry of agony, uttered by poor Rosa, who,
trembling and pale, with her arms raised to heaven, made her appearance
behind the grated window, and thus interposed between her father and her
friend.

Gryphus then understood the danger with which he had been threatened,
and he broke out in a volley of the most terrible abuse.

"Indeed," said Cornelius to him, "you must be a very mean and spiteful
fellow to rob a poor prisoner of his only consolation, a tulip bulb."

"For shame, my father," Rosa chimed in, "it is indeed a crime you have
committed here."

"Ah, is that you, my little chatter-box?" the old man cried, boiling
with rage and turning towards her; "don't you meddle with what don't
concern you, but go down as quickly as possible."

"Unfortunate me," continued Cornelius, overwhelmed with grief.

"After all, it is but a tulip," Gryphus resumed, as he began to be a
little ashamed of himself. "You may have as many tulips as you like: I
have three hundred of them in my loft."

"To the devil with your tulips!" cried Cornelius; "you are worthy of
each other: had I a hundred thousand millions of them, I would gladly
give them for the one which you have just destroyed."

"Oh, so!" Gryphus said, in a tone of triumph; "now there we have it.
It was not your tulip you cared for. There was in that false bulb some
witchcraft, perhaps some means of correspondence with conspirators
against his Highness who has granted you your life. I always said they
were wrong in not cutting your head off."

"Father, father!" cried Rosa.

"Yes, yes! it is better as it is now," repeated Gryphus, growing warm;
"I have destroyed it, and I'll do the same again, as often as you repeat
the trick. Didn't I tell you, my fine fellow, that I would make your
life a hard one?"

"A curse on you!" Cornelius exclaimed, quite beyond himself with
despair, as he gathered, with his trembling fingers, the remnants of
that bulb on which he had rested so many joys and so many hopes.

"We shall plant the other to-morrow, my dear Mynheer Cornelius,"
said Rosa, in a low voice, who und