You comprehend, my dear Rosa, a man may steal a guilder, and risk the prison for such a trifle, and, consequently, it is much more likely that some one might steal a hundred thousand guilders." "No one ever enters the garden but myself." "Thank you, thank you, my dear Rosa.

All the joy of my life has still to come from you." And as the lips of Van Baerle approached the grating with the same ardor as the day before, and as, moreover, the hour for retiring had struck, Rosa drew back her head, and stretched out her hand.
In this pretty little hand, of which the coquettish damsel was particularly proud, was the bulb.
Cornelius kissed most tenderly the tips of her fingers.

Did he do so because the hand kept one of the bulbs of the great black tulip, or because this hand was Rosa's?
We shall leave this point to the decision of wiser heads than ours.
Rosa withdrew with the other two suckers, pressing them to her heart.
Did she press them to her heart because they were the bulbs of the great black tulip, or because she had them from Cornelius?
This point, we believe, might be more readily decided than the other.
However that may have been, from that moment life became sweet, and again full of interest to the prisoner.
Rosa, as we have seen, had returned to him one of the suckers.
Every evening she brought to him, handful by handful, a quantity of soil from that part of the garden which he had found to be the best, and which, indeed, was excellent.
A large jug, which Cornelius had skilfully broken, did service as a flower-pot.

He half filled it, and mixed the earth of the garden with a small portion of dried river mud, a mixture which formed an excellent soil.
Then, at the beginning of April, he planted his first sucker in that jug.
Not a day passed on which Rosa did not come to have her chat with Cornelius.
The tulips, concerning whose cultivation Rosa was taught all the mysteries of the art, formed the principal topic of the conversation; but, interesting as the subject was, people cannot always talk about tulips.
They therefore began to chat also about other things, and the tulip-fancier found out to his great astonishment what a vast range of subjects a conversation may comprise.
Only Rosa had made it a habit to keep her pretty face invariably six inches distant from the grating, having perhaps become distrustful of herself.
There was one thing especially which gave Cornelius almost as much anxiety as his bulbs--a subject to which he always returned--the dependence of Rosa on her father.
Indeed, Van Baerle's happiness depended on the whim of this man.

He might one day find Loewestein dull, or the air of the place unhealthy, or the gin bad, and leave the fortress, and take his daughter with him, when Cornelius and Rosa would again be separated.
"Of what use would the carrier pigeons then be ?" said Cornelius to Rosa, "as you, my dear girl, would not be able to read what I should write to you, nor to write to me your thoughts in return." "Well," answered Rosa, who in her heart was as much afraid of a separation as Cornelius himself, "we have one hour every evening, let us make good use of it." "I don't think we make such a bad use of it as it is." "Let us employ it even better," said Rosa, smiling.