The two men, whose lives had been spent in the welfare of their country, were massacred with unspeakable savagery, and their bodies, stripped, and hacked almost beyond recognition, were then strung up on a hastily erected gibbet in the market-place.

When the worst had been done, the young man, who had secretly watched the proceedings from the window of a neighbouring house, returned the key to the gatekeeper.

Then the prince mounted a horse which an equerry held in waiting for him, and galloped off to camp to await the message of the States.  He galloped proudly, for the burghers of The Hague had made of the corpses of the De Witts a stepping stone to power for William of Orange.

II.—­Betrayed for his Bulbs

Doctor Cornelius van Baerle, the godson of Cornelius de Witt, was in his twenty-eighth year, an orphan, but nevertheless, a really happy man.  His father had amassed a fortune of 400,000 guilders in trade with the Indies, and an estate brought him in 10,000 guilders a year.  He was blessed with the love of a peaceful life with good nerves, ample wealth, and a philosophic mind.

Left alone in the big house at Dordrecht, he steadily resisted all temptations to public life.  He took up the study of botany, and then, not knowing what to do with his time and money, decided to go in for one of the most extravagant hobbies of the time—­the cultivation of his favourite flower, the tulip.  The fame of Mynheer van Baerle’s tulips soon spread in the district, and while Cornelius de Witt had roused deadly hatred by sowing the seeds of political passion, Van Baerle with his tulips won general goodwill.  Yet, all unknowingly, Van Baerle had made an enemy, an implacable, relentless enemy.  This was his neighbour, Isaac Boxtel, who lived next door to him in Dordrecht.

Boxtel, from childhood, had been a passionate tulip-grower.  He had even produced a tulip of his own, and the Boxtel had won wide admiration.  One day, to his horror, Boxtel discovered that his next-door neighbour, the wealthy Mynheer van Baerle, was also a tulip-grower.  In bitter anguish Boxtel foresaw that he had a rival who, with all the resources at his command, might equal and possibly surpass the famous Boxtel creations.  He almost choked with envy, and from the moment of his discovery lived under continual fear.  The healthy pastime of tulip growing became, under these conditions, a morbid and evil occupation for Boxtel, while Van Baerle, on the other hand, totally unaware of the enmity brewing, threw himself into the business with the keenest zest, taking for his motto the old aphorism, “To despise flowers is to insult God.”

So fierce was the envy that seized Boxtel that though he would have shrunk from the infamy of destroying a tulip, he would have killed the man who grew them.  His own plants were neglected; it was useless and hopeless to contend against so wealthy a rival.  Then Boxtel, fascinated by his evil passion, bought a telescope, and, perched on a ladder, studied Van Baerle’s tulip beds and the drying-room, the tulip-grower’s sacred place.