orror, Boxtel discovered that his next-door neighbour, the
wealthy Mynheer van Baerle, was also a tulip-grower. In bitter anguish
Boxtel foresaw that he had a rival who, with all the resources at his
command, might equal and possibly surpass the famous Boxtel creations.
He almost choked with envy, and from the moment of his discovery lived
under continual fear. The healthy pastime of tulip growing became, under
these conditions, a morbid and evil occupation for Boxtel, while Van
Baerle, on the other hand, totally unaware of the enmity brewing, threw
himself into the business with the keenest zest, taking for his motto
the old aphorism, "To despise flowers is to insult God."

So fierce was the envy that seized Boxtel that though he would have
shrunk from the infamy of destroying a tulip, he would have killed the
man who grew them. His own plants were neglected; it was useless and
hopeless to contend against so wealthy a rival. Then Boxtel, fascinated
by his evil passion, bought a telescope, and, perched on a ladder,
studied Van Baerle's tulip beds and the drying-room, the tulip-grower's
sacred place.

One night he lost all moral control, and tying the hind legs of two cats
together with a piece of string, he flung the animals into Van Baerle's
garden. To Boxtel's bitter mortification the cats, though they made
havoc of many precious plants before they broke the string, left the
four finest tulips untouched.

Shortly afterwards the Haarlem Tulip Society offered a prize of 100,000
guilders to whomsoever should produce a large black tulip, without spot
or blemish. Van Baerle at once thought out the idea of the black tulip.
He had already achieved a dark brown one, while Boxtel, who had only
managed to produce a light brown one, gave up the quest as impossible,
and could do nothing but spy on his neighbour's activities.

One evening in January 1672, Cornelius de Witt came to see his grandson,
Cornelius van Baerle, and went with him alone into the sacred drying-
room, the laboratory of the tulip-grower. Boxtel, with his telescope,
recognised the well-known features of the statesman, and presently he
saw him hand his godson a packet, which the latter put carefully away in
a cabinet. This packet contained the correspondence of John de Witt and
M. de Louvois.

Cornelius drove away, and Boxtel wondered what the packet contained. It
could hardly be bulbs; it must be secret papers.

It was not till August, as we know, that Cr