l the flower is, the more does one offend God in
despising it.

"The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers.

"Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond measure."

By reasoning of this kind, it can be seen that the four or five thousand
tulip-growers of Holland, France, and Portugal, leaving out those of
Ceylon and China and the Indies, might, if so disposed, put the whole
world under the ban, and condemn as schismatics and heretics and
deserving of death the several hundred millions of mankind whose hopes
of salvation were not centred upon the tulip.

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

Mynheer van Baerle and his tulips, therefore, were in the mouth of
everybody; so much so, that Boxtel's name disappeared for ever from the
list of the notable tulip-growers in Holland, and those of Dort were now
represented by Cornelius van Baerle, the modest and inoffensive savant.

Engaging, heart and soul, in his pursuits of sowing, planting, and
gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole fraternity of tulip-growers
in Europe, entertained nor the least suspicion that there was at his
very door a pretender whose 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 with such marvellous
productions as no mortal man, following in the tracks of the Creator,
except perhaps Shakespeare and Rubens, have equalled in point of
numbers.

And also, if Dante had wished for a new type to be added to his
characters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtel during the period
of Van Baerle's successes. Whilst Cornelius was weeding, manuring,
watering his beds, whilst, kneeling on the turf border, he analysed
every vein of the flowering tulips, and meditated on the modifications
which might be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel,
concealed behind a small sycamore which he had trained at the top of the
partition wall in the shape of a fan, watched, with his eyes starting
from their sockets and with foaming mouth, every step and every gesture
of his neighbour; and whenever he thought he saw him look happy, or
descried a smile on his lips, or a flash of contentment glistening in
his eyes, he poured out towards him such a volley of maledictions
and furious threats as to make it indeed a matter of wonder that
this venomous breath