Summaries

Synopsis

The orphan Sophia is cared for in a convent in the Dutch Republic just before the 17th century tulip mania. A marriage proposal from the far-older spice merchant Cornelis enables her to leave, with the generous dowry allowing her sisters to emigrate to New Amsterdam, where they have an aunt awaiting them, their only surviving relative.

Three years later, Sophia is unhappy in the marriage, since Cornelis seems to be concerned only with conceiving an heir, to no avail thus far. Cornelis believes this misfortune to have something to do with a mistake he made in the past, with his previous wife: she miscarried their first child and when Cornelis asked the doctor to save the second child over the wife, he feels that God punished him by taking both his wife and his child.

Cornelis hires a painter so that he may be remembered as having a beautiful young wife, should he have no heir to continue his legacy. Sophia agrees, but as soon as the young painter Jan arrives to paint the couple, he and Sophia fall in love. Jan sends a note to Sophia, asking her to send him a vase of tulips. She shows up at his door with the tulips, and they consummate their love.

Meanwhile, Sophia's friend, the housemaid Maria, is in a courtship with the neighborhood fishmonger, Willem. Willem is speculating in the tulip market, and is doing quite well and, expecting to be independently prosperous and able to marry Maria, he sells his business to another fishmonger. Sophia borrows Maria's cloak and heads to a rendezvous with Jan. Willem, seeing Sophia in the cloak, mistakes her for Maria, and follows her to her rendezvous. Crushed by what he thinks is Maria's infidelity, he goes to a pub to drown his sorrows. There a prostitute robs him of the money he has acquired in the tulip market. When he tries to retrieve the money, he is beaten by her brother and a mob of his friends and forcibly pressed into the Dutch Navy.

Jan plots to escape to the new world with Sophia, after having success of his own in the tulip market. He learns that the nuns at St. Ursula (the convent Sophia came from) raise tulips in their gardens. Jan attempts to steal some of the bulbs but is knocked out by the abbess of St. Ursula. When he regains consciousness, he apologizes and the abbess gives him the bulbs Willem had bought before he was abducted into the navy.

Maria realizes that she is pregnant with Willem's child. With Willem gone, the baby will be born out of wedlock. Maria explains her condition to Sophia and threatens to reveal Sophia's affair to Cornelis if she disclosed to Cornelis the pregnancy. Sophia conspires with Maria to pass off the pregnancy as her own: when the baby is born, Sophia will pretend to die in childbirth so she can leave with Jan and Maria can raise the child as her own with Cornelis.

After Maria gives birth to a daughter and Sophia pretends to die, Cornelis is grief stricken at the loss of his wife. Sophia, under her shroud, weeps as she realizes that she has deeply hurt Cornelis with her deceit, but eventually realizes that it is too late to undo what she has done. Ashamed of herself, Sophia runs away and Jan is unable to find her.

Willem, returning after his stint in the navy in Africa, visits Maria at Cornelis's house. Maria is furious at him, but they soon reconcile once he discovers he was not betrayed. Cornelis overhears their loud quarreling and the revelation of the conspiracy among Maria, Sophia, and Jan. Cornelis makes his peace with the truth, and departs for the Dutch East Indies, where he finds love and makes a family, but only after leaving the house to Maria, Willem, and the baby girl that he loved as his own.

Eight years later, the abbess of St. Ursula visits Jan and views his artwork of Sophia. She praises him for his talent, and commissions him to paint a mural in the church. When Jan looks down from the scaffold, he sees Sophia, who has joined the convent, and they share tender smiles.