exclaimed,--

"Rosa! Rosa!"

"This tulip is yours, is it not, my child?" said the Prince.

"Yes, Monseigneur," stammered Rosa, whose striking beauty excited a
general murmur of applause.

"Oh!" muttered Cornelius, "she has then belied me, when she said this
flower was stolen from her. Oh! that's why she left Loewestein. Alas!
am I then forgotten, betrayed by her whom I thought my best friend on
earth?"

"Oh!" sighed Boxtel, "I am lost."

"This tulip," continued the Prince, "will therefore bear the name of its
producer, and figure in the catalogue under the title, Tulipa nigra Rosa
Barlaensis, because of the name Van Baerle, which will henceforth be the
name of this damsel."

And at the same time William took Rosa's hand, and placed it in that of
a young man, who rushed forth, pale and beyond himself with joy, to the
foot of the throne saluting alternately the Prince and his bride; and
who with a grateful look to heaven, returned his thanks to the Giver of
all this happiness.

At the same moment there fell at the feet of the President van Systens
another man, struck down by a very different emotion.

Boxtel, crushed by the failure of his hopes, lay senseless on the
ground.

When they raised him, and examined his pulse and his heart, he was quite
dead.

This incident did not much disturb the festival, as neither the Prince
nor the President seemed to mind it much.

Cornelius started back in dismay, when in the thief, in the pretended
Jacob, he recognised his neighbour, Isaac Boxtel, whom, in the innocence
of his heart, he had not for one instant suspected of such a wicked
action.

Then, to the sound of trumpets, the procession marched back without any
change in its order, except that Boxtel was now dead, and that Cornelius
and Rosa were walking triumphantly side by side and hand in hand.

On their arriving at the Hotel de Ville, the Prince, pointing with
his finger to the purse with the hundred thousand guilders, said to
Cornelius,--

"It is difficult to say by whom this money is gained, by you or by Rosa;
for if you have found the black tulip, she has nursed it and brought it
into flower. It would therefore be unjust to consider it as her dowry;
it is the gift of the town of Haarlem to the tulip."

Cornelius wondered what the Prince was driving at. The latter
continued,--

"I give to Rosa the sum of a hundred thousand guilders, which she has
fairly earned, and which she can offer to you. They ar