Complete and unabridged, with 53 full-page plates by Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen and Gerard ter Borch. Holland, 1672: a mob tears two statesmen to pieces in the street, and a quiet gentleman in Dordrecht goes on trying to breed a black tulip because a hundred thousand guilders are offered for one. Dumas takes the real lynching of the De Witt brothers, sets a flower contest beside it, and lets a jealous neighbor do the rest. The tulip mania was forty years past and the greed was not. Fifty-three plates of Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch and their contemporaries carry the Dutch courtyards, burghers and golden-age light that surround Dumas's tale of tulip greed.
