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Page 30
Yet, although thus consoling himself with illusory
suppositions, Boxtel was not able to resist the burning
curiosity which was devouring him. In the evening,
therefore, he placed a ladder against the partition wall
between their gardens, and, looking into that of his
neighbour Van Baerle, he convinced himself that the soil of
a large square bed, which had formerly been occupied by
different plants, was removed, and the ground disposed in
beds of loam mixed with river mud (a combination which is
particularly favourable to the tulip), and the whole
surrounded by a border of turf to keep the soil in its
place. Besides this, sufficient shade to temper the noonday
heat; aspect south-southwest; water in abundant supply, and
at hand; in short, every requirement to insure not only
success but also progress. There could not be a doubt that
Van Baerle had become a tulip-grower.
Boxtel at once pictured to himself this learned man, with a
capital of four hundred thousand and a yearly income of ten
thousand guilders, devoting all his intellectual and
financial resources to the cultivation of the tulip. He
foresaw his neighbour's success, and he felt such a pang at
the mere idea of this success that his hands dropped
powerless, his knees trembled, and he fell in despair from
the ladder.
And thus it was not for the sake of painted tulips, but for
real ones, that Van Baerle took from him half a degree of
warmth. And thus Van Baerle was to have the most admirably
fitted aspect, and, besides, a large, airy, and well
ventilated chamber where to preserve his bulbs and
seedlings; while he, Boxtel, had been obliged to give up for
this purpose his bedroom, and, lest his sleeping in the same
apartment might injure his bulbs and seedlings, had taken up
his abode in a miserable garret.
Boxtel, then, was to have next door to him a rival and
successful competitor; and his rival, instead of being some
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."
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