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Page 34
But the most curious part of the operations was not
performed in the garden.
It might be one o'clock in the morning when Van Baerle went
up to his laboratory, into the glazed cabinet whither
Boxtel's telescope had such an easy access; and here, as
soon as the lamp illuminated the walls and windows, Boxtel
saw the inventive genius of his rival at work.
He beheld him sifting his seeds, and soaking them in liquids
which were destined to modify or to deepen their colours. He
knew what Cornelius meant when heating certain grains, then
moistening them, then combining them with others by a sort
of grafting, -- a minute and marvellously delicate
manipulation, -- and when he shut up in darkness those which
were expected to furnish the black colour, exposed to the
sun or to the lamp those which were to produce red, and
placed between the endless reflections of two water-mirrors
those intended for white, the pure representation of the
limpid element.
This innocent magic, the fruit at the same time of
child-like musings and of manly genius -- this patient
untiring labour, of which Boxtel knew himself to be
incapable -- made him, gnawed as he was with envy, centre
all his life, all his thoughts, and all his hopes in his
telescope.
For, strange to say, the love and interest of horticulture
had not deadened in Isaac his fierce envy and thirst of
revenge. Sometimes, whilst covering Van Baerle with his
telescope, he deluded himself into a belief that he was
levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he would
seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which
was to have killed his neighbour. But it is time that we
should connect with this epoch of the operations of the one,
and the espionage of the other, the visit which Cornelius de
Witt came to pay to his native town.
Chapter 7
The Happy Man makes Acquaintance with Misfortune
Cornelius de Witt, after having attended to his family
affairs, reached the house of his godson, Cornelius van
Baerle, one evening in the month of January, 1672.
De Witt, although being very little of a horticulturist or
of an artist, went over the whole mansion, from the studio
to the green-house, inspecting everything, from the pictures
down to the tulips. He thanked his godson for having joined
him on the deck of the admiral's ship "The Seven Provinces,"
during the battle of Southwold Bay, and for having given his
name to a magnificent tulip; and whilst he thus, with the
kindness and affability of a father to a son, visited Van
Baerle's treasures, the crowd gathered with curiosity, and
even respect, before the door of the happy man.
All this hubbub excited the attention of Boxtel, who was
just taking his meal by his fireside. He inquired what it
meant, and, on being informed of the cause of all this stir,
climbed up to his post of observation, where in spite of the
cold, he took his stand, with the telescope to his eye.
This telescope had not been of great service to him since
the autumn of 1671. The tulips, like true daughters of the
East, averse to cold, do not abide in the open ground in
winter. They need the shelter of the house, the soft bed on
the shelves, and the congenial warmth of the stove. Van
Baerle, therefore, passed the whole winter in his
laboratory, in the midst of his books and pictures. He went
only rarely to the room where he kept his bulbs, unless it
were to allow some occasional rays of the sun to enter, by
opening one of the movable sashes of the glass front.
On the evening of which we are speaking, after the two
Corneliuses had visited together all the apartments of the
house, whilst a train of domestics followed their steps, De
Witt said in a low voice to Van Baerle, --
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