the following sophism: —
“Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen, as he is charged with
high treason, and arrested.
“I, on the contrary, am a good citizen, as I am not charged
with anything in the world, as I am as free as the air of
heaven.”
“If, therefore, Cornelius de Witt is a bad citizen, — of
which there can be no doubt, as he is charged with high
treason, and arrested, — his accomplice, Cornelius van
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Baerle, is no less a bad citizen than himself.
“And, as I am a good citizen, and as it is the duty of every
good citizen to inform against the bad ones, it is my duty
to inform against Cornelius van Baerle.”
Specious as this mode of reasoning might sound, it would not
perhaps have taken so complete a hold of Boxtel, nor would
he perhaps have yielded to the mere desire of vengeance
which was gnawing at his heart, had not the demon of envy
been joined with that of cupidity.
Boxtel was quite aware of the progress which Van Baerle had
made towards producing the grand black tulip.
Dr. Cornelius, notwithstanding all his modesty, had not been
able to hide from his most intimate friends that he was all
but certain to win, in the year of grace 1673, the prize of
a hundred thousand guilders offered by the Horticultural
Society of Haarlem.
It was just this certainty of Cornelius van Baerle that
caused the fever which raged in the heart of Isaac Boxtel.
If Cornelius should be arrested there would necessarily be a
great upset in his house, and during the night after his
arrest no one would think of keeping watch over the tulips
in his garden.
Now in that night Boxtel would climb over the wall and, as
he knew the position of the bulb which was to produce the
grand black tulip, he would filch it; and instead of
flowering for Cornelius, it would flower for him, Isaac; he
also, instead of Van Baerle, would have the prize of a
hundred thousand guilders, not to speak of the sublime
honour of calling the new flower Tulipa nigra Boxtellensis,
— a result which would satisfy not only his vengeance, but
also his cupidity and his ambition.
Awake, he thought of nothing but the grand black tulip;
asleep, he dreamed of it.
At last, on the 19th of August, about two o’clock in the
afternoon, the temptation grew so strong, that Mynheer Isaac
was no longer able to resist it.
Accordingly, he wrote an anonymous information, the minute
exactness of which made up for its want of authenticity, and
posted his letter.
Never did a venomous paper, slipped into the jaws of the
bronze lions at Venice, produce a more prompt and terrible
effect.
On the same evening the letter reached the principal
magistrate, who without a moment’s delay convoked his
colleagues early for the next morning. On the following
morning, therefore, they assembled, and decided on Van
Baerle’s arrest, placing the order for its execution in the
hands of Master van Spennen, who, as we have seen, performed
his duty like a true Hollander, and who arrested the Doctor
at the very hour when the Orange party at the Hague were
roasting the bleeding shreds of flesh torn from the corpses
of Cornelius and John de Witt.
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But, whether from a feeling of shame or from craven
weakness, Isaac Boxtel did not venture that day to point his
telescope either at the garden, or at the laboratory, or at
the dry-room.
He knew too well what was about to happen in the house of
the poor doctor to feel any desire to look into it. He did
not even get up when his only servant — who envied the lot
of the servants of Cornelius just as bitterly as Boxtel did
that of their master — entered his bedroom. He said to the
man, —
“I shall not get up to-day, I am ill.”
About nine o’clock he heard a great noise in the street
which made him tremble, at this moment he was paler than a