ep towards gaining the prize offered by the
Horticultural Society of Haarlem. He had progressed from hazel-nut shade
to that of roasted coffee, and on the very day when the frightful events
took place at the Hague which we have related in the preceding chapters,
we find him, about one o'clock in the day, gathering from the border the
young suckers raised from tulips of the colour of roasted coffee; and
which, being expected to flower for the first time in the spring of
1675, would undoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by the
Haarlem Society.

On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius was therefore in
his dry-room, with his feet resting on the foot-bar of the table, and
his elbows on the cover, looking with intense delight on three suckers
which he had just detached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect,
and entire, and from which was to grow that wonderful produce of
horticulture which would render the name of Cornelius van Baerle for
ever illustrious.

"I shall find the black tulip," said Cornelius to himself, whilst
detaching the suckers. "I shall obtain the hundred thousand guilders
offered by the Society. I shall distribute them among the poor of Dort;
and thus the hatred which every rich man has to encounter in times of
civil wars will be soothed down, and I shall be able, without fearing
any harm either from Republicans or Orangists, to keep as heretofore my
borders in splendid condition. I need no more be afraid lest on the day
of a riot the shopkeepers of the town and the sailors of the port should
come and tear out my bulbs, to boil them as onions for their families,
as they have sometimes quietly threatened when they happened to remember
my having paid two or three hundred guilders for one bulb. It is
therefore settled I shall give the hundred thousand guilders of the
Haarlem prize to-the poor. And yet----"

Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh. "And yet," he continued,
"it would have been so very delightful to spend the hundred thousand
guilders on the enlargement of my tulip-bed or even on a journey to the
East, the country of beautiful flowers. But, alas! these are no thoughts
for the present times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, and
beating of drums are the order of the day."

Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again. Then turning his
glance towards his bulbs,--objects of much greater importance to him
than all those muskets, standards, drums, and procl