Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/83

 Just this certainty of Cornelius Van Baerle caused the fever which raged in the heart of Isaac Boxtel.

If Cornelius should be arrested, there would necessarily be a great upset in his house, and, during the night after his arrest, no one would think of keeping watch over the tulips in his garden.

Now, in that night, Boxtel would climb over the wall, and, as he knew the place of the bulb which was to produce the grand black tulip, he would filch it; and instead of flowering for Cornelius, it would flower for him, Isaac: he also, instead of Van Baerle, would have the prize of a hundred thousand guilders, not to speak of the sublime honour of calling the new flower Tulipa nigra Boxtellensis—a result which would satisfy not only his vengeance, but also his cupidity and his ambition.

Awake, he thought of nothing but the grand black tulip; asleep, he dreamed of it.

At last, on the 19th of August, about two o’clock in the afternoon, the temptation grew so strong, that Mynheer Isaac was no longer able to resist it.

Accordingly he wrote an anonymous information, the minute exactness of which made up for its want of authenticity; and posted his letter.

Never did a venomous paper, slipped into the jaws of the bronze lions at Venice, produce a more prompt and terrible effect.

On the same evening the letter reached the principal magistrate, who, without a moment’s delay, convoked his colleagues early for the next morning. On the following morning, therefore, they assembled, and decided on Van Baerle’s arrest, placing the order for its execution in the hands of Master Van Spennen, who, as we have seen, performed his duty like a true Hollander, and who arrested the doctor at the very