A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the
more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University
of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his
pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice
which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble,
and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings
of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, who was not
unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the
ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion,
had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his
Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the
tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out of
his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily as he looked around
the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.
“Holy Virgin, signor!” cried old Dame Lisabetta, who, won by the
youth’s remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the
chamber a habitable air, “what a sigh was that to come out of a young
man’s heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of
Heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as
bright sunshine as you have left in Naples.”
Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not
quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that
of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden
beneath the window and expended its fostering influences on a variety
of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care.
“Does this garden belong to the house?” asked Giovanni.
“Heaven forbid, signor, unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs
than any that grow there now,” answered old Lisabetta. “No; that garden
is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous
doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is
said that he distils these plants into medicines that are as potent as
a charm. Oftentimes you may see the signor doctor at work, and
perchance the signora, his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers
that grow in the garden.”
The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the
chamber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints,
took her departure.
Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the
garden beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one
of those botanic gardens which were of earlier date in Padua than
elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once
have been the pleasure-place of an opulent family; for there was the
ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but
so wofully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original
design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however,
continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever.
A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man’s window, and made
him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song
unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one
century imbodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable
garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided
grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of
moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances,
flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set
in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of
purple blossoms, each of which had the lustre and richness of a gem;
and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough
to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every
portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less
beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their
individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them.
Some were placed in urns, rich with old carving, and others in common
garden pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground or climbed on
high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had
wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite
veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily
arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.
While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen
of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden.
His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no
common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man,
dressed in a scholar’s garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of
life, with gray hair, a thin, gray beard, and a face singularly marked
with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more
youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.
Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener
examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was
looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to
their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape
and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among
themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep
intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between
himself and these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided
their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution
that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man’s demeanor was
that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts,
or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one
moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was
strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this air of
insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and
innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of
the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of
the present world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what
his own hands caused to grow,—was he the Adam?
The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or
pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with
a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his
walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its
purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over
his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a
deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew
back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a
person affected with inward disease, “Beatrice! Beatrice!”
“Here am I, my father. What would you?” cried a rich and youthful voice
from the window of the opposite house—a voice as rich as a tropical
sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep
hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. “Are you
in the garden?”
“Yes, Beatrice,” answered the gardener, “and I need your help.”
Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young
girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of
the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid
that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with
life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and
compressed, as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her
virgin zone. Yet Giovanni’s fancy must have grown morbid while he
looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger
made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of
those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be
approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it
was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of several of the
plants which her father had most sedulously avoided.
“Here, Beatrice,” said the latter, “see how many needful offices
require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my
life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned
to your sole charge.”
“And gladly will I undertake it,” cried again the rich tones of the
young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her
arms as if to embrace it. “Yes, my sister, my splendour, it shall be
Beatrice’s task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with
thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the breath of life.”
Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly
expressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the
plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his
eyes and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite
flower, or one sister performing the duties of affection to another.
The scene soon terminated. Whether Dr. Rappaccini had finished his
labors in the garden, or that his watchful eye had caught the
stranger’s face, he now took his daughter’s arm and retired. Night was
already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the
plants and steal upward past the open window; and Giovanni, closing the
lattice, went to his couch and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful
girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught
with some strange peril in either shape.
But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify
whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred
during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the
less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni’s first movement, on
starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into
the garden which his dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. He was
surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an
affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun which gilded the
dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter
beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of
ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced that, in the heart of the
barren city, he had the privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely
and luxuriant vegetation. It would serve, he said to himself, as a
symbolic language to keep him in communion with Nature. Neither the
sickly and thoughtworn Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, it is true, nor his
brilliant daughter, were now visible; so that Giovanni could not
determine how much of the singularity which he attributed to both was
due to their own qualities and how much to his wonder-working fancy;
but he was inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.
In the course of the day he paid his respects to Signor Pietro
Baglioni, professor of medicine in the university, a physician of
eminent repute to whom Giovanni had brought a letter of introduction.
The professor was an elderly personage, apparently of genial nature,
and habits that might almost be called jovial. He kept the young man to
dinner, and made himself very agreeable by the freedom and liveliness
of his conversation, especially when warmed by a flask or two of Tuscan
wine. Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of the same
city, must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an
opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the professor
did not respond with so much cordiality as he had anticipated.
“Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine,” said
Professor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of Giovanni, “to
withhold due and well-considered praise of a physician so eminently
skilled as Rappaccini; but, on the other hand, I should answer it but
scantily to my conscience were I to permit a worthy youth like
yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of an ancient friend, to imbibe
erroneous ideas respecting a man who might hereafter chance to hold
your life and death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Dr.
Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty—with
perhaps one single exception—in Padua, or all Italy; but there are
certain grave objections to his professional character.”
“And what are they?” asked the young man.
“Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is so
inquisitive about physicians?” said the professor, with a smile. “But
as for Rappaccini, it is said of him—and I, who know the man well, can
answer for its truth—that he cares infinitely more for science than for
mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some
new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest,
or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as
a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated
knowledge.”
“Methinks he is an awful man indeed,” remarked Guasconti, mentally
recalling the cold and purely intellectual aspect of Rappaccini. “And
yet, worshipful professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many men
capable of so spiritual a love of science?”
“God forbid,” answered the professor, somewhat testily; “at least,
unless they take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by
Rappaccini. It is his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised
within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he
cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new
varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the
assistance of this learned person, would ever have plagued the world
withal. That the signor doctor does less mischief than might be
expected with such dangerous substances is undeniable. Now and then, it
must be owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure;
but, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive
little credit for such instances of success,—they being probably the
work of chance,—but should be held strictly accountable for his
failures, which may justly be considered his own work.”
The youth might have taken Baglioni’s opinions with many grains of
allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long
continuance between him and Dr. Rappaccini, in which the latter was
generally thought to have gained the advantage. If the reader be
inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain black-letter
tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical department of the
University of Padua.
“I know not, most learned professor,” returned Giovanni, after musing
on what had been said of Rappaccini’s exclusive zeal for science,—“I
know not how dearly this physician may love his art; but surely there
is one object more dear to him. He has a daughter.”
“Aha!” cried the professor, with a laugh. “So now our friend Giovanni’s
secret is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men
in Padua are wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good
hap to see her face. I know little of the Signora Beatrice save that
Rappaccini is said to have instructed her deeply in his science, and
that, young and beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified
to fill a professor’s chair. Perchance her father destines her for
mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or
listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of
lachryma.”
Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine he had
quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in
reference to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his way,
happening to pass by a florist’s, he bought a fresh bouquet of flowers.
Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but within
the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he could look down
into the garden with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his
eye was a solitude. The strange plants were basking in the sunshine,
and now and then nodding gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment
of sympathy and kindred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew
the magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all over it;
they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths of the
pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored radiance from the rich
reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we have said, the
garden was a solitude. Soon, however,—as Giovanni had half hoped, half
feared, would be the case,—a figure appeared beneath the antique
sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling
their various perfumes as if she were one of those beings of old
classic fable that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice,
the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty
exceeded his recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its
character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni
whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals
of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former
occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and
sweetness,—qualities that had not entered into his idea of her
character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might
be. Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between
the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gemlike flowers
over the fountain,—a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have indulged
a fantastic humor in heightening, both by the arrangement of her dress
and the selection of its hues.
Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate
ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate embrace—so intimate that
her features were hidden in its leafy bosom and her glistening ringlets
all intermingled with the flowers.
“Give me thy breath, my sister,” exclaimed Beatrice; “for I am faint
with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate
with gentlest fingers from the stem and place it close beside my
heart.”
With these words the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of
the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her
bosom. But now, unless Giovanni’s draughts of wine had bewildered his
senses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange-colored reptile,
of the lizard or chameleon species, chanced to be creeping along the
path, just at the feet of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni,—but, at
the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything
so minute,—it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture
from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard’s head.
For an instant the reptile contorted itself violently, and then lay
motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this remarkable
phenomenon and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did
she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There
it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious
stone, adding to her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which
nothing else in the world could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the
shadow of his window, bent forward and shrank back, and murmured and
trembled.
“Am I awake? Have I my senses?” said he to himself. “What is this
being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?”
Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching closer
beneath Giovanni’s window, so that he was compelled to thrust his head
quite out of its concealment in order to gratify the intense and
painful curiosity which she excited. At this moment there came a
beautiful insect over the garden wall; it had, perhaps, wandered
through the city, and found no flowers or verdure among those antique
haunts of men until the heavy perfumes of Dr. Rappaccini’s shrubs had
lured it from afar. Without alighting on the flowers, this winged
brightness seemed to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air
and fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that
Giovanni Guasconti’s eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied
that, while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it
grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright wings shivered; it was
dead—from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the atmosphere
of her breath. Again Beatrice crossed herself and sighed heavily as she
bent over the dead insect.
An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window. There
she beheld the beautiful head of the young man—rather a Grecian than an
Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold
among his ringlets—gazing down upon her like a being that hovered in
mid air. Scarcely knowing what he did, Giovanni threw down the bouquet
which he had hitherto held in his hand.
“Signora,” said he, “there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear them
for the sake of Giovanni Guasconti.”
“Thanks, signor,” replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that came
forth as it were like a gush of music, and with a mirthful expression
half childish and half woman-like. “I accept your gift, and would fain
recompense it with this precious purple flower; but if I toss it into
the air it will not reach you. So Signor Guasconti must even content
himself with my thanks.”
She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly
ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to
a stranger’s greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But
few as the moments were, it seemed to Giovanni, when she was on the
point of vanishing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful
bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle
thought; there could be no possibility of distinguishing a faded flower
from a fresh one at so great a distance.
For many days after this incident the young man avoided the window that
looked into Dr. Rappaccini’s garden, as if something ugly and monstrous
would have blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed into a glance. He
felt conscious of having put himself, to a certain extent, within the
influence of an unintelligible power by the communication which he had
opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would have been, if his heart
were in any real danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once;
the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the
familiar and daylight view of Beatrice—thus bringing her rigidly and
systematically within the limits of ordinary experience. Least of all,
while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni to have remained so near this
extraordinary being that the proximity and possibility even of
intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild
vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing.
Guasconti had not a deep heart—or, at all events, its depths were not
sounded now; but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern
temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever pitch. Whether
or no Beatrice possessed those terrible attributes, that fatal breath,
the affinity with those so beautiful and deadly flowers which were
indicated by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a
fierce and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her
rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her
spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to
pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and
horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered
like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know
what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his
breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to
renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or
bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the
illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.
Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid
walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps
kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to
accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm
was seized by a portly personage, who had turned back on recognizing
the young man and expended much breath in overtaking him.
“Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!” cried he. “Have you forgotten
me? That might well be the case if I were as much altered as yourself.”
It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first
meeting, from a doubt that the professor’s sagacity would look too
deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared
forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a
man in a dream.
“Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now
let me pass!”
“Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti,” said the professor,
smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest
glance. “What! did I grow up side by side with your father? and shall
his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand
still, Signor Giovanni; for we must have a word or two before we part.”
“Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily,” said Giovanni,
with feverish impatience. “Does not your worship see that I am in
haste?”
Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the street,
stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face
was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so
pervaded with an expression of piercing and active intellect that an
observer might easily have overlooked the merely physical attributes
and have seen only this wonderful energy. As he passed, this person
exchanged a cold and distant salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his
eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever
was within him worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar
quietness in the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human
interest, in the young man.
“It is Dr. Rappaccini!” whispered the professor when the stranger had
passed. “Has he ever seen your face before?”
“Not that I know,” answered Giovanni, starting at the name.
“He HAS seen you! he must have seen you!” said Baglioni, hastily. “For
some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I
know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face
as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance
of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as
deep as Nature itself, but without Nature’s warmth of love. Signor
Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the subject of one of
Rappaccini’s experiments!”
“Will you make a fool of me?” cried Giovanni, passionately. “THAT,
signor professor, were an untoward experiment.”
“Patience! patience!” replied the imperturbable professor. “I tell
thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific interest in
thee. Thou hast fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora
Beatrice,—what part does she act in this mystery?”
But Guasconti, finding Baglioni’s pertinacity intolerable, here broke
away, and was gone before the professor could again seize his arm. He
looked after the young man intently and shook his head.
“This must not be,” said Baglioni to himself. “The youth is the son of
my old friend, and shall not come to any harm from which the arcana of
medical science can preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an
impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad out of my own hands,
as I may say, and make use of him for his infernal experiments. This
daughter of his! It shall be looked to. Perchance, most learned
Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little dream of it!”
Meanwhile Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length found
himself at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the threshold he was
met by old Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled, and was evidently
desirous to attract his attention; vainly, however, as the ebullition
of his feelings had momentarily subsided into a cold and dull vacuity.
He turned his eyes full upon the withered face that was puckering
itself into a smile, but seemed to behold it not. The old dame,
therefore, laid her grasp upon his cloak.
“Signor! signor!” whispered she, still with a smile over the whole
breadth of her visage, so that it looked not unlike a grotesque carving
in wood, darkened by centuries. “Listen, signor! There is a private
entrance into the garden!”
“What do you say?” exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as if an
inanimate thing should start into feverish life. “A private entrance
into Dr. Rappaccini’s garden?”
“Hush! hush! not so loud!” whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand over
his mouth. “Yes; into the worshipful doctor’s garden, where you may see
all his fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would give gold to be
admitted among those flowers.”
Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand.
“Show me the way,” said he.
A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni, crossed
his mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might perchance be
connected with the intrigue, whatever were its nature, in which the
professor seemed to suppose that Dr. Rappaccini was involving him. But
such a suspicion, though it disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to
restrain him. The instant that he was aware of the possibility of
approaching Beatrice, it seemed an absolute necessity of his existence
to do so. It mattered not whether she were angel or demon; he was
irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey the law that whirled him
onward, in ever-lessening circles, towards a result which he did not
attempt to foreshadow; and yet, strange to say, there came across him a
sudden doubt whether this intense interest on his part were not
delusory; whether it were really of so deep and positive a nature as to
justify him in now thrusting himself into an incalculable position;
whether it were not merely the fantasy of a young man’s brain, only
slightly or not at all connected with his heart.
He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His
withered guide led him along several obscure passages, and finally
undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and
sound of rustling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among
them. Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the
entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden
entrance, stood beneath his own window in the open area of Dr.
Rappaccini’s garden.
How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass
and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible
realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid
circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to
anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his
own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an
appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance.
So was it now with Giovanni. Day after day his pulses had throbbed with
feverish blood at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice,
and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking in
the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze
the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own existence. But now
there was a singular and untimely equanimity within his breast. He
threw a glance around the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father
were present, and, perceiving that he was alone, began a critical
observation of the plants.
The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness
seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There was hardly an
individual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a
forest, would not have been startled to find growing wild, as if an
unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several also would
have shocked a delicate instinct by an appearance of artificialness
indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were,
adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production was no
longer of God’s making, but the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved
fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably
the result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in
mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possessing the
questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole growth
of the garden. In fine, Giovanni recognized but two or three plants in
the collection, and those of a kind that he well knew to be poisonous.
While busy with these contemplations he heard the rustling of a silken
garment, and, turning, beheld Beatrice emerging from beneath the
sculptured portal.
Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deportment;
whether he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or
assume that he was there with the privity at least, if not by the
desire, of Dr. Rappaccini or his daughter; but Beatrice’s manner placed
him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt by what agency he
had gained admittance. She came lightly along the path and met him near
the broken fountain. There was surprise in her face, but brightened by
a simple and kind expression of pleasure.
“You are a connoisseur in flowers, signor,” said Beatrice, with a
smile, alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the window.
“It is no marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father’s rare
collection has tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were here, he
could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to the nature and
habits of these shrubs; for he has spent a lifetime in such studies,
and this garden is his world.”
“And yourself, lady,” observed Giovanni, “if fame says true,—you
likewise are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these rich
blossoms and these spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my
instructress, I should prove an apter scholar than if taught by Signor
Rappaccini himself.”
“Are there such idle rumors?” asked Beatrice, with the music of a
pleasant laugh. “Do people say that I am skilled in my father’s science
of plants? What a jest is there! No; though I have grown up among these
flowers, I know no more of them than their hues and perfume; and
sometimes methinks I would fain rid myself of even that small
knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those not the least
brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet my eye. But pray,
signor, do not believe these stories about my science. Believe nothing
of me save what you see with your own eyes.”
“And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?” asked
Giovanni, pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made him
shrink. “No, signora; you demand too little of me. Bid me believe
nothing save what comes from your own lips.”
It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep flush
to her cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni’s eyes, and responded
to his gaze of uneasy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness.
“I do so bid you, signor,” she replied. “Forget whatever you may have
fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be
false in its essence; but the words of Beatrice Rappaccini’s lips are
true from the depths of the heart outward. Those you may believe.”
A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni’s
consciousness like the light of truth itself; but while she spoke there
was a fragrance in the atmosphere around her, rich and delightful,
though evanescent, yet which the young man, from an indefinable
reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It might be the odor
of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice’s breath which thus embalmed her
words with a strange richness, as if by steeping them in her heart? A
faintness passed like a shadow over Giovanni and flitted away; he
seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl’s eyes into her transparent
soul, and felt no more doubt or fear.
The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice’s manner vanished; she
became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her communion
with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have
felt conversing with a voyager from the civilized world. Evidently her
experience of life had been confined within the limits of that garden.
She talked now about matters as simple as the daylight or summer
clouds, and now asked questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni’s
distant home, his friends, his mother, and his sisters—questions
indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and
forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed
out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first
glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and
sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a
deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and
rubies sparkled upward among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon
there gleamed across the young man’s mind a sense of wonder that he
should be walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon
his imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in whom
he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful
attributes,—that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother,
and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such reflections
were only momentary; the effect of her character was too real not to
make itself familiar at once.
In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and now,
after many turns among its avenues, were come to the shattered
fountain, beside which grew the magnificent shrub, with its treasury of
glowing blossoms. A fragrance was diffused from it which Giovanni
recognized as identical with that which he had attributed to Beatrice’s
breath, but incomparably more powerful. As her eyes fell upon it,
Giovanni beheld her press her hand to her bosom as if her heart were
throbbing suddenly and painfully.
“For the first time in my life,” murmured she, addressing the shrub, “I
had forgotten thee.”
“I remember, signora,” said Giovanni, “that you once promised to reward
me with one of these living gems for the bouquet which I had the happy
boldness to fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a memorial
of this interview.”
He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice
darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a
dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of
her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his
fibres.
“Touch it not!” exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. “Not for thy life!
It is fatal!”
Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the
sculptured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld
the emaciated figure and pale intelligence of Dr. Rappaccini, who had
been watching the scene, he knew not how long, within the shadow of the
entrance.
No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice
came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery
that had been gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her,
and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She
was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine
qualities; she was worthiest to be worshipped; she was capable, surely,
on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he
had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her
physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle
sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment,
rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more
unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of
such a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half
ideas which throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect
consciousness. Thus did he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the
dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Dr. Rappaccini’s
garden, whither Giovanni’s dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the sun in
his due season, and, flinging his beams upon the young man’s eyelids,
awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand—in his right
hand—the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own when he was on
the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of that
hand there was now a purple print like that of four small fingers, and
the likeness of a slender thumb upon his wrist.
Oh, how stubbornly does love,—or even that cunning semblance of love
which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into
the heart,—how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes
when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a
handkerchief about his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him,
and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice.
After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of
what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in
the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni’s daily life, but the
whole space in which he might be said to live; for the anticipation and
memory of that ecstatic hour made up the remainder. Nor was it
otherwise with the daughter of Rappaccini. She watched for the youth’s
appearance, and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if
they had been playmates from early infancy—as if they were such
playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich
sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and
reverberate throughout his heart: “Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest
thou? Come down!” And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous
flowers.
But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in
Beatrice’s demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea
of infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all
appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that
conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of
the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they
had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits
darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame;
and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any
slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched
one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment—so marked was the
physical barrier between them—had never been waved against him by a
breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to
overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore
such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a
spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such times he was startled
at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns
of his heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint
as the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance. But, when
Beatrice’s face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she was
transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being whom he had
watched with so much awe and horror; she was now the beautiful and
unsophisticated girl whom he felt that his spirit knew with a certainty
beyond all other knowledge.
A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni’s last meeting with
Baglioni. One morning, however, he was disagreeably surprised by a
visit from the professor, whom he had scarcely thought of for whole
weeks, and would willingly have forgotten still longer. Given up as he
had long been to a pervading excitement, he could tolerate no
companions except upon condition of their perfect sympathy with his
present state of feeling. Such sympathy was not to be expected from
Professor Baglioni.
The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip of
the city and the university, and then took up another topic.
“I have been reading an old classic author lately,” said he, “and met
with a story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may remember
it. It is of an Indian prince, who sent a beautiful woman as a present
to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as
the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich
perfume in her breath—richer than a garden of Persian roses. Alexander,
as was natural to a youthful conqueror, fell in love at first sight
with this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage physician, happening
to be present, discovered a terrible secret in regard to her.”
“And what was that?” asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to avoid
those of the professor.
“That this lovely woman,” continued Baglioni, with emphasis, “had been
nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature
was so imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest
poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich
perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have
been poison—her embrace death. Is not this a marvellous tale?”
“A childish fable,” answered Giovanni, nervously starting from his
chair. “I marvel how your worship finds time to read such nonsense
among your graver studies.”
“By the by,” said the professor, looking uneasily about him, “what
singular fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the perfume of your
gloves? It is faint, but delicious; and yet, after all, by no means
agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it would make me ill. It
is like the breath of a flower; but I see no flowers in the chamber.”
“Nor are there any,” replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the
professor spoke; “nor, I think, is there any fragrance except in your
worship’s imagination. Odors, being a sort of element combined of the
sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us in this manner. The
recollection of a perfume, the bare idea of it, may easily be mistaken
for a present reality.”
“Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,” said
Baglioni; “and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that of
some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be
imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, tinctures
his medicaments with odors richer than those of Araby. Doubtless,
likewise, the fair and learned Signora Beatrice would minister to her
patients with draughts as sweet as a maiden’s breath; but woe to him
that sips them!”
Giovanni’s face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in which the
professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was a
torture to his soul; and yet the intimation of a view of her character
opposite to his own, gave instantaneous distinctness to a thousand dim
suspicions, which now grinned at him like so many demons. But he strove
hard to quell them and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover’s
perfect faith.
“Signor professor,” said he, “you were my father’s friend; perchance,
too, it is your purpose to act a friendly part towards his son. I would
fain feel nothing towards you save respect and deference; but I pray
you to observe, signor, that there is one subject on which we must not
speak. You know not the Signora Beatrice. You cannot, therefore,
estimate the wrong—the blasphemy, I may even say—that is offered to her
character by a light or injurious word.”
“Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!” answered the professor, with a calm
expression of pity, “I know this wretched girl far better than
yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner
Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes, poisonous as she is
beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my gray hairs,
it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has become
a truth by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person
of the lovely Beatrice.”