unknown, obscure gardener, was the godson of Mynheer
Cornelius de Witt, that is to say, a celebrity.
Boxtel, as the reader may see, was not possessed of the
spirit of Porus, who, on being conquered by Alexander,
consoled himself with the celebrity of his conqueror.
And now if Van Baerle produced a new tulip, and named it the
John de Witt, after having named one the Cornelius? It was
indeed enough to choke one with rage.
Thus Boxtel, with jealous foreboding, became the prophet of
his own misfortune. And, after having made this melancholy
discovery, he passed the most wretched night imaginable.
Chapter 6
The Hatred of a Tulip-fancier
From that moment Boxtel’s interest in tulips was no longer a
stimulus to his exertions, but a deadening anxiety.
Henceforth all his thoughts ran only upon the injury which
his neighbour would cause him, and thus his favourite
occupation was changed into a constant source of misery to him.
Van Baerle, as may easily be imagined, had no sooner begun
to apply his natural ingenuity to his new fancy, than he
succeeded in growing the finest tulips. Indeed; he knew
better than any one else at Haarlem or Leyden — the two
towns which boast the best soil and the most congenial
climate — how to vary the colours, to modify the shape, and
to produce new species.
He belonged to that natural, humorous school who took for
their motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered
by one of their number in 1653, — “To despise flowers is to
offend God.”
From that premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the most
exclusive of all schools, worked out the following syllogism
in the same year: —
“To despise flowers is to offend God.
“The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offend
God in despising it.
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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
“The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers.
“Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond
measure.”
By reasoning of this kind, it can be seen that the four or
five thousand tulip-growers of Holland, France, and
Portugal, leaving out those of Ceylon and China and the
Indies, might, if so disposed, put the whole world under the
ban, and condemn as schismatics and heretics and deserving
of death the several hundred millions of mankind whose hopes
of salvation were not centred upon the tulip.
We cannot doubt that in such a cause Boxtel, though he was
Van Baerle’s deadly foe, would have marched under the same
banner with him.
Mynheer van Baerle and his tulips, therefore, were in the
mouth of everybody; so much so, that Boxtel’s name
disappeared for ever from the list of the notable
tulip-growers in Holland, and those of Dort were now
represented by Cornelius van Baerle, the modest and
inoffensive savant.
Engaging, heart and soul, in his pursuits of sowing,
planting, and gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole
fraternity of tulip-growers in Europe, entertained nor the
least suspicion that there was at his very door a pretender
whose throne he had usurped.
He went on in his career, and consequently in his triumphs;
and in the course of two years he covered his borders with
such marvellous productions as no mortal man, following in
the tracks of the Creator, except perhaps Shakespeare and
Rubens, have equalled in point of numbers.
And also, if Dante had wished for a new type to be added to
his characters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtel
during the period of Van Baerle’s successes. Whilst
Cornelius was weeding, manuring, watering his beds, whilst,
kneeling on the turf border, he analysed every vein of the
flowering tulips, and meditated on the modifications which
might be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel,
concealed behind a small sycamore which he had trained at
the top of the partition wall in the shape of a fan,
watched, with his eyes starting from their sockets and with
foaming mouth, every step and every gesture of his
neighbour; and whenever he thought he saw him look happy, or
descried a smile on his lips, or a flash of contentment
glistening in his eyes, he poured out towards him such a