ing lessons; and,
fortunately, she had made sufficient progress to dispense with the help
of a master when the master was not to be Cornelius.

Rosa therefore applied herself most diligently to reading poor Cornelius
de Witt's Bible, on the second fly leaf of which the last will of
Cornelius van Baerle was written.

"Alas!" she muttered, when perusing again this document, which she never
finished without a tear, the pearl of love, rolling from her limpid
eyes on her pale cheeks--"alas! at that time I thought for one moment he
loved me."

Poor Rosa! she was mistaken. Never had the love of the prisoner been
more sincere than at the time at which we are now arrived, when in the
contest between the black tulip and Rosa the tulip had had to yield to
her the first and foremost place in Cornelius's heart.

But Rosa was not aware of it.

Having finished reading, she took her pen, and began with as laudable
diligence the by far more difficult task of writing.

As, however, Rosa was already able to write a legible hand when
Cornelius so uncautiously opened his heart, she did not despair of
progressing quickly enough to write, after eight days at the latest, to
the prisoner an account of his tulip.

She had not forgotten one word of the directions given to her 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 luminous and prominent object in his mind; but he no longer
looked upon it as a treasure to which he ought to sacrifice everything,
and even Rosa, but as a marvellous combination of nature and art with
which he would have been happy to adorn the bosom of his beloved one.

Yet during the whole of that day he was haunted with a vague uneasiness,
at the bottom of which was the fear lest Rosa should not come in the
evening to pay him her usual visit. This thought took more and more hold
of him, until at the approach of evening his whole mind was absorbed in
it.

How his heart beat when darkness closed in! The words which he had said
to Rosa on the evening before and which had so deeply afflicted her, now
came back to his mind more vividly than ever, and he asked himself
how he could have told his gentle comforter to sacrifice him to his
tulip,--that is to say, to give up seeing him, if need be,--whereas to
him the sight of Rosa had become a condition of life.

In Cornelius's ce