It was money lent at a thousand per cent., which, as nobody will deny, was a very handsome investment.
The headsman, on the other hand, had scarcely anything to do to earn his hundred guilders. He needed only, as soon as the execution was over, to allow Mynheer Boxtel to ascend the scaffold with his servants, to remove the inanimate remains of his friend.
The thing was, moreover, quite customary among the “faithful brethren,” when one of their masters died a public death in the yard of the Buitenhof.
A fanatic like Cornelius might very easily have found another fanatic who gave a hundred guilders for his remains.
The executioner also readily acquiesced in the proposal, making only one condition—that of being paid in advance.
Boxtel, like the people who enter a show at a fair, might not be pleased, and refuse to pay on going out.
Boxtel paid in advance, and waited.
After this the reader may imagine how excited Boxtel was; with what anxiety he watched the guards, the Recorder, and the executioner; and with what intense interest he surveyed the movements of Van Baerle. How would he place himself on the block? how would he fall? and would he not, in falling, crush those inestimable bulbs? had not he at least taken care to inclose them in a golden box? as gold is the hardest of all metals.
Every trifling delay irritated him. Why did that stupid executioner thus lose his time in brandishing his sword over the head of Cornelius, instead of cutting that head off?
But when he saw the Recorder take the hand of the condemned, and raise him, whilst drawing forth the parchment from his pocket; when he heard the
