From that moment Boxtel's interest in tulips was no longer astimulus to his exertions, but a deadening anxiety.

　　Henceforth all his thoughts ran only upon the injury whichhis neighbour would cause him, and thus his favouriteoccupation was changed into a constant source of misery to him.

　　Van Baerle, as may easily be imagined, had no sooner begunto apply his natural ingenuity to his new fancy, than hesucceeded in growing the finest tulips. Indeed; he knewbetter than any one else at Haarlem or Leyden -- the twotowns which boast the best soil and the most congenialclimate -- how to vary the colours, to modify the shape, andto produce new species.

　　He belonged to that natural, humorous school who took fortheir motto in the seventeenth century the aphorism utteredby one of their number in 1653, -- "To despise flowers is tooffend God."From that premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the mostexclusive of all schools, worked out the following syllogismin the same year: --"To despise flowers is to offend God.

　　"The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offendGod in despising it.

　　"The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers.

　　"Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyondmeasure."By reasoning of this kind, it can be seen that the four orfive thousand tulip-growers of Holland, France, andPortugal, leaving out those of Ceylon and China and theIndies, might, if so disposed, put the whole world under theban, and condemn as schismatics and heretics and deservingof death the several hundred millions of mankind whose hopesof salvation were not centred upon the tulip.

　　We cannot doubt that in such a cause Boxtel, though he wasVan Baerle's deadly foe, would have marched under the samebanner with him.

　　Mynheer van Baerle and his tulips, therefore, were in themouth of everybody; so much so, that Boxtel's namedisappeared for ever from the list of the notabletulip-growers in Holland, and those of Dort were nowrepresented by Cornelius van Baerle, the modest andinoffensive savant.

　　Engaging, heart and soul, in his pursuits of sowing,planting, and gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the wholefraternity of tulip-growers in Europe, entertained nor theleast suspicion that there was at his very door a pretenderwhose 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 withsuch marvellous productions as no mortal man, following inthe tracks of the Creator, except perhaps Shakespeare andRubens, have equalled in point of numbers.

　　And also, if Dante had wished for a new type to be added tohis characters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtelduring the period of Van Baerle's successes. WhilstCornelius was weeding, manuring, watering his beds, whilst,kneeling on the turf border, he analysed every vein of theflowering tulips, and meditated on the modifications whichmight be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel,concealed behind a small sycamore which he had trained atthe top of the partition wall in the shape of a fan,watched, with his eyes starting from their sockets and withfoaming mouth, every step and every gesture of hisneighbour; and whenever he thought he saw him look happy, ordescried a smile on his lips, or a flash of contentmentglistening in his eyes, he poured out towards him such avolley of maledictions and furious threats as to make itindeed a matter of wonder that this venomous breath of envyand hatred did not carry a blight on the innocent flowerswhich had excited it.

　　When the evil spirit has once taken hold of the heart ofman, it urges him on, without letting him stop. Thus Boxtelsoon was no longer content with seeing Van Baerle. He wantedto see his flowers, too; he had the feelings of an artist,the master-piece of a rival engrossed his interest.

　　He therefore bought a telescope, which enabled him to watchas accurately as did the owner himself every progressivedevelopment of the flower, from the moment when, in thefirst year, its pale seed-leaf begins to peep from theground, to that glorious one, when, after five years, itspetals at last reveal the hidden treasures of its chalice.

　　How often had the miserable, jealous man to observe in VanBaerle's beds tulips which dazzled him by their beauty, andalmost choked him by their perfection!

　　And then, after the first blush of the admiration which hecould not help feeling, he began to be tortured by the pangsof envy, by that slow fever which creeps over the heart andchanges it into a nest of vipers, each devouring the otherand ever born anew. How often did Boxtel, in the midst oftortures which no pen is able fully to describe, -- howoften did he feel an inclination to jump down into thegarden during the night, to destroy the plants, to tear thebulbs with his teeth, and to sacrifice to his wrath theowner himself, if he should venture to stand up for thedefence of his tulips!

　　But to kill a tulip was a horrible crime in the eyes of agenuine tulip-fancier; as to killing a man, it would nothave mattered so very much.

　　Yet Van Baerle made such progress in the noble science ofgrowing tulips, which he seemed to master with the trueinstinct of genius, that Boxtel at last was maddened to sucha degree as to think of throwing stones and sticks into theflower-stands of his neighbour. But, remembering that hewould be sure to be found out, and that he would not only bepunished by law, but also dishonoured for ever in the faceof all the tulip-growers of Europe, he had recourse tostratagem, and, to gratify his hatred, tried to devise aplan by means of which he might gain his ends without beingcompromised himself.

　　He considered a long time, and at last his meditations werecrowned with success.

　　One evening he tied two cats together by their hind legswith a string about six feet in length, and threw them fromthe wall into the midst of that noble, that princely, thatroyal bed, which contained not only the "Cornelius de Witt,"but also the "Beauty of Brabant," milk-white, edged withpurple and pink, the "Marble of Rotterdam," colour of flax,blossoms feathered red and flesh colour, the "Wonder ofHaarlem," the "Colombin obscur," and the "Columbin clairterni."The frightened cats, having alighted on the ground, firsttried to fly each in a different direction, until the stringby which they were tied together was tightly stretchedacross the bed; then, however, feeling that they were notable to get off, they began to pull to and fro, and to wheelabout with hideous caterwaulings, mowing down with theirstring the flowers among which they were struggling, until,after a furious strife of about a quarter of an hour, thestring broke and the combatants vanished.

　　Boxtel, hidden behind his sycamore, could not see anything,as it was pitch-dark; but the piercing cries of the catstold the whole tale, and his heart overflowing with gall nowthrobbed with triumphant joy.

　　Boxtel was so eager to ascertain the extent of the injury,that he remained at his post until morning to feast his eyeson the sad state in which the two cats had left theflower-beds of his neighbour. The mists of the morningchilled his frame, but he did not feel the cold, the hope ofrevenge keeping his blood at fever heat. The chagrin of hisrival was to pay for all the inconvenience which he incurredhimself.

　　At the earliest dawn the door of the white house opened, andVan Baerle made his appearance, approaching the flower-bedswith the smile of a man who has passed the night comfortablyin his bed, and has had happy dreams.

　　All at once he perceived furrows and little mounds of earthon the beds which only the evening before had been as smoothas a mirror, all at once he perceived the symmetrical rowsof his tulips to be completely disordered, like the pikes ofa battalion in the midst of which a shell has fallen.

　　He ran up to them with blanched cheek.

　　Boxtel trembled with joy. Fifteen or twenty tulips, torn andcrushed, were lying about, some of them bent, otherscompletely broken and already withering, the sap oozing fromtheir bleeding bulbs: how gladly would Van Baerle haveredeemed that precious sap with his own blood!

　　But what were his surprise and his delight! what was thedisappointment of his rival! Not one of the four tulipswhich the latter had meant to destroy was injured at all.

　　They raised proudly their noble heads above the corpses oftheir slain companions. This was enough to console VanBaerle, and enough to fan the rage of the horticulturalmurderer, who tore his hair at the sight of the effects ofthe crime which he had committed in vain.

　　Van Baerle could not imagine the cause of the mishap, which,fortunately, was of far less consequence than it might havebeen. On making inquiries, he learned that the whole nighthad been disturbed by terrible caterwaulings. He besidesfound traces of the cats, their footmarks and hairs leftbehind on the battle-field; to guard, therefore, in futureagainst a similar outrage, he gave orders that henceforthone of the under gardeners should sleep in the garden in asentry-box near the flower-beds.

　　Boxtel heard him give the order, and saw the sentry-box putup that very day; but he deemed himself lucky in not havingbeen suspected, and, being more than ever incensed againstthe successful horticulturist, he resolved to bide his time.

　　Just then the Tulip Society of Haarlem offered a prize forthe discovery (we dare not say the manufacture) of a largeblack tulip without a spot of colour, a thing which had notyet been accomplished, and was considered impossible, as atthat time there did not exist a flower of that speciesapproaching even to a dark nut brown. It was, therefore,generally said that the founders of the prize might just aswell have offered two millions as a hundred thousandguilders, since no one would be able to gain it.

　　The tulip-growing world, however, was thrown by it into astate of most active commotion. Some fanciers caught at theidea without believing it practicable, but such is the powerof imagination among florists, that although considering theundertaking as certain to fail, all their thoughts wereengrossed by that great black tulip, which was looked uponto be as chimerical as the black swan of Horace or the whiteraven of French tradition.

　　Van Baerle was one of the tulip-growers who were struck withthe idea; Boxtel thought of it in the light of aspeculation. Van Baerle, as soon as the idea had once takenroot in his clear and ingenious mind, began slowly thenecessary planting and cross-breeding to reduce the tulipswhich he had grown already from red to brown, and from brownto dark brown.

　　By the next year he had obtained flowers of a perfectnut-brown, and Boxtel espied them in the border, whereas hehad himself as yet only succeeded in producing the lightbrown.

　　It might perhaps be interesting to explain to the gentlereader the beautiful chain of theories which go to provethat the tulip borrows its colors from the elements; perhapswe should give him pleasure if we were to maintain andestablish that nothing is impossible for a florist whoavails himself with judgment and discretion and patience ofthe sun's heat; the clear water, the juices of the earth,and the cool breezes. But this is not a treatise upon tulipsin general; it is the story of one particular tulip which wehave undertaken to write, and to that we limit ourselves,however alluring the subject which is so closely allied toours.

　　Boxtel, once more worsted by the superiority of his hatedrival, was now completely disgusted with tulip-growing, and,being driven half mad, devoted himself entirely toobservation.

　　The house of his rival was quite open to view; a gardenexposed to the sun; cabinets with glass walls, shelves,cupboards, boxes, and ticketed pigeon-holes, which couldeasily be surveyed by the telescope. Boxtel allowed hisbulbs to rot in the pits, his seedlings to dry up in theircases, and his tulips to wither in the borders andhenceforward occupied himself with nothing else but thedoings at Van Baerle's. He breathed through the stalks ofVan Baerle's tulips, quenched his thirst with the water hesprinkled upon them, and feasted on the fine soft earthwhich his neighbour scattered upon his cherished bulbs.

　　But the most curious part of the operations was notperformed in the garden.

　　It might be one o'clock in the morning when Van Baerle wentup to his laboratory, into the glazed cabinet whitherBoxtel's telescope had such an easy access; and here, assoon as the lamp illuminated the walls and windows, Boxtelsaw the inventive genius of his rival at work.

　　He beheld him sifting his seeds, and soaking them in liquidswhich were destined to modify or to deepen their colours. Heknew what Cornelius meant when heating certain grains, thenmoistening them, then combining them with others by a sortof grafting, -- a minute and marvellously delicatemanipulation, -- and when he shut up in darkness those whichwere expected to furnish the black colour, exposed to thesun or to the lamp those which were to produce red, andplaced between the endless reflections of two water-mirrorsthose intended for white, the pure representation of thelimpid element.

　　This innocent magic, the fruit at the same time ofchild-like musings and of manly genius -- this patientuntiring labour, of which Boxtel knew himself to beincapable -- made him, gnawed as he was with envy, centreall his life, all his thoughts, and all his hopes in histelescope.

　　For, strange to say, the love and interest of horticulturehad not deadened in Isaac his fierce envy and thirst ofrevenge. Sometimes, whilst covering Van Baerle with histelescope, he deluded himself into a belief that he waslevelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he wouldseek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot whichwas to have killed his neighbour. But it is time that weshould connect with this epoch of the operations of the one,and the espionage of the other, the visit which Cornelius deWitt came to pay to his native town.