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."

From that premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the most exclusive of
all schools, worked out the following syllogism in the same year:--

"To despise flowers is to offend God.

"The more beautifu