Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/74

 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 prize Haarlem 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 proclamations, which he conceived only to be fit to disturb the minds of honest people he said,—

“These are, indeed, beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are, how well formed! there is that air of melancholy about them which promises to produce a flower of the colour of ebony. On their skin you cannot even distinguish the circulating veius with the naked eye. Certainly, certainly, not a light spot will disfigure the tulip which I have called into existence. And by what name shall we call this offspring of my sleepless nights, of my labour and my thought? Tulipa nigra Barlæensis.”

“Yes, Barlænsis; a fine name. All the tulip—fan ciers—that is to say all the intelligent people of Europe—will feel a thrill of excitement when the rumour spreads to the four quarters of the globe: ‘How is it called?’ the fauciers will ask.— ‘Tulipa nigra Barlæensis!’ ‘Why, Barlæensis?’