“Silence!” said the Prince; “all these affairs of state, as I have already said, are completely out of the province of the Horticultural Society of Haarlem.” Then, knitting his brow, he added,-- “As to the tulip, make yourself easy, Master Boxtel, you shall have justice done to you.” Boxtel bowed with a heart full of joy, and received the congratulations of the President. “You, my child,” William of Orange continued, “you were going to commit a crime. I will not punish you; but the real evil-doer shall pay the penalty for both. A man of his name may be a conspirator, and even a traitor, but he ought not to be a thief.” “A thief!” cried Rosa. “Cornelius a thief? Pray, your Highness, do not say such a word, it would kill him, if he knew it. If theft there has been, I swear to you, Sir, no one else but this man has committed it.” “Prove it,” Boxtel coolly remarked. “I shall prove it. With God’s help I shall.” Then, turning towards Boxtel, she asked,-- “The tulip is yours?” “It is.” “How many bulbs were there of it?” Boxtel hesitated for a moment, but after a short consideration he came to the conclusion that she would not ask this question if there were none besides the two bulbs of which he had known already. He therefore answered,-- “Three.” “What has become of these bulbs?” “Oh! what has become of them? Well, one has failed; the second has produced the black tulip.” “And the third?” “The third!” “The third,--where is it?” “I have it at home,” said Boxtel, quite confused. “At home? Where? At Loewestein, or at Dort?” “At Dort,” said Boxtel. “You lie!” cried Rosa. “Monseigneur,” she continued, whilst turning round to the Prince, “I will tell you the true story of these three bulbs. The first was crushed by my father in the prisoner’s cell, and this man is quite aware of it, for he himself wanted to get hold of it, and, being balked in his hope, he very nearly fell out with my father, who had been the cause of his disappointment. The second bulb, planted by me, has produced the black tulip, and the third and last”--saying this, she drew it from her bosom--“here it is, in the very same paper in which it was wrapped up together with the two others. When about to be led to the scaffold, Cornelius van Baerle gave me all the three. Take it, Monseigneur, take it.” And Rosa, unfolding the paper, offered the bulb to the Prince, who took it from her hands and examined it. “But, Monseigneur, this young woman may have stolen the bulb, as she did the tulip,” Boxtel said, with a faltering voice, and evidently alarmed at the attention with which the Prince examined the bulb; and even more at the movements of Rosa, who was reading some lines written on the paper which remained in her hands. Her eyes suddenly lighted up; she read, with breathless anxiety, the mysterious paper over and over again; and at last, uttering a cry, held it out to the Prince and said, “Read, Monseigneur, for Heaven’s sake, read!”