1899] THE CASE OF DOCTOR OTTO KUNTZE *oi 



var. ? malinvaudianum, veritables herbes mauvaises qui pulluleront a 

 Paris en 1900." — " Les nialheureux ! Voila ce qu'ils font du langage 

 des ileurs ! " observes, a propos of this trump card, the Journal des 

 Dtbats, 14th October. Et nunc erudimini. 



Have we been sufficiently absurd, O my learned friends, to take 

 literally, for six years past, the rhodomontade of this old bogie, eater 

 of botanists. His savage roarings, his round matador eyes, the dread- 

 ful twirls of his cabbage-cutter, hid a humorous and sportive nature. 

 Like the street mountebanks who pretend to swallow snakes and 

 swords. Scratch the sword-swallower and you will see revealed the 

 chalked nose of the clown so dear to infancy. 



But our Old Bogie is not comfortable. Every time he conjures up 

 the menacing spectre of the 1900 Congress, he beholds the repropaga- 

 tion of the tare that his claws have just destroyed and he loses the 

 thread of his ideas. An irritating vision haunts him — that of an assembly 

 where one will demand better arguments than " pickpocket," " bully," 

 " Jesuit," and " sheepshead," and where turbulent humbugs, demoniacs, 

 retailers of pamphlets at twenty-eight marks the volume, will be 

 summoned back to good manners. The " Trifolium " proves satis- 

 factorily that Doctor Kuntze has still lucid intervals. 



Not for the sake of Kuntze, but for those who may have succeeded 

 in construing his gibberish into current language, I have brought 

 to light one, or rather two calumnious assertions upon which this pure 

 flower of learning returns with a fury and with hiccups of big words 

 (fifteen pages of abuse) that denote a bad conscience. 



He does not cease to write and to print that I have abominably 

 violated a " contract " between us on the subject of our private 

 correspondence. Now there is a unilateral contract and a bilateral 

 one. To request some one whom you suppose to be a gentleman to hold 

 as confidential a correspondence that you commence, is not a contract ; 

 it is a courteous appeal to the elementary rules of honour. M. 

 Kuntze, on the other hand, considers a " contract " the following 

 procedure : to accept the correspondence, to carry it on to the nine- 

 teenth letter, and then to break it off abruptly, with this ultimatum : 

 " Je vous defends de publier quoi que ce soit en fait de nomenclature, si vous 

 ne faites pas paraitre en menu temps et in cxtenso toutes mes lettres et 

 toutes les votres " (this last part of the paragraph is adroitly sup- 

 pressed in the Revisio, iii. (2), p. 58, where there is only a question of 

 " reciprocity "). M. Kuntze having a lively interest in forcing my 

 silence — one sees why — and in stifling my objections, found it quite 

 natural to shield himself behind the privacy of my letters, and 

 threatened me, in no equivocal terms, to divulge them in case of dis- 

 obedience. This trap he decorates with the pompous title of " con- 

 tract." Readers of the Bulletin de I'Herbier Boissier (1896, p. 575) 

 know in what very categorical terms I have rejected this fool's contract, 

 terms which have not prevented Kuntze from republishing the lying 



