"So may God grant me mercy, and to her health and long life!
"Cornelius van Baerle."
The prisoner then, giving the Bible to Rosa, said,-"Read."
"Alas!" she answered, "I have already told you I cannot read."
Cornelius then read to Rosa the testament that he had just made.
The agony of the poor girl almost overpowered her.
"Do you accept my conditions?" asked the prisoner, with a melancholy smile, kissing the trembling hands of the afflicted girl.
"Oh, I don't know, sir," she stammered.
"You don't know, child, and why not?"
"Because there is one condition which I am afraid I cannot keep."
"Which? I should have thought that all was settled between us."
"You give me the hundred thousand guilders as a marriage portion, don't you?
"And under the condition of my marrying a man whom I love?"
"Certainly."
"Well, then, sir, this money cannot belong to me. I shall never love any one; neither shall I marry."
And, after having with difficulty uttered these words, Rosa almost swooned away in the violence of her grief.
Cornelius, frightened at seeing her so pale and sinking, was going to take her in his arms, when a heavy step, followed by other dismal sounds, was heard on the staircase, amidst the continued barking of the dog.
"They are coming to fetch you. Oh God! Oh God!" cried Rosa, wringing her hands. "And have you nothing more to tell me?"
She fell on her knees with her face buried in her hands and became almost senseless.
"I have only to say, that I wish you to preserve these bulbs as a most precious treasure, and carefully to treat them according to the directions I have given you. Do it for my sake, and now farewell, Rosa."
"Yes, yes," she said, without raising her head, "I will do anything you bid me, except marrying," she added, in a low voice, "for that, oh! that is impossible for me."
She then put the cherished treasure next her beating heart.
The noise on the staircase which Cornelius and Rosa had heard was caused by the Recorder, who was coming for the prisoner. He was followed by the executioner, by the soldiers who were to form the guard round the scaffold, and by some curious hangers-on of the prison.
Cornelius, without showing any weakness, but likewise without any bravado, received them rather as friends than as persecutors, and quietly submitted to all those preparations which these men were obliged to make in performance of their duty.
Then, casting a glance into the yard through the narrow iron-barred window of his cell, he perceived the scaffold, and, at twenty paces distant from it, the gibbet, from which, by order of the Stadtholder, the outraged remains of the two brothers De Witt had been taken down.