Rappaccini's Daughter
FROM THE WRITINGS OF AUBÉPINE
WE DO NOT remember to have seen any
translated specimens of the productions of M. de l'Aubépine; a fact
the less to be wondered at, as his very name is unknown to many of his
own countrymen, as well as to the student of foreign literature. As a
writer, he seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the
Transcendentalists (who, under one name or another, have their share
in all the current literature of the world), and the great body of
pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the
multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy
and unsubstantial in his modes of development, to suit the taste of
the latter class, and yet too popular to satisfy the spiritual or
metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find
himself without an audience; except here and there an individual, or
possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them justice, are not
altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him
greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is
apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and
people in the
clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His
fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and
sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference
either to time or space. In any case, he generally contents himself
with a very slight embroidery of outward manners,--the faintest
possible counterfeit of real life,--and endeavors to create an
interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the subject.
Occasionally, a breath of nature, a rain-drop of pathos and
tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of
his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet
within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this very
cursory notice, that M. de l'Aubépine's productions, if the reader
chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a
leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they
can hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense.
Our author is voluminous; he continues to write
and publish with as much praiseworthy and indefatigable prolixity, as
if his efforts were crowned with the brilliant success that so justly
attends those of Eugene Sue. His first appearance was by a collection
of stories, in a long series of volumes, entitled "Comes
deux fois racontées." The titles of some of his more
recent works (we quote from memory) are as follows:--"Le
Voyage Céleste à Chemin de Fer," 3 tom. 1838. "Le
nouveau Père Adam et la nouvelle Mère Eve," 2 tom. 1839.
"Roderic; ou le Serpent à l'estomac," 2 tom.
1840. "Le Culte du Feu," a folio volume of
ponderous research into the religion and ritual of the old Persian
Ghebers, published in 1841. "La Soirée du Chateau en
Espagne," 1 tom. 8vo. 1842; and "L'Artiste du
Beau; ou le Papillon Mécanique," 5 tom. 4to. 1843. Our
somewhat wearisome perusal of this startling catalogue of volumes has
left behind it a certain personal affection and sympathy, though by no
means admiration, for
M. de l'Aubépine; and we would fain do the little in our power
towards introducing him favorably to the American public. The ensuing
tale is a translation of his "Beatrice; ou la Belle
Empoisonneuse," recently published in "La Revue
Anti-Aristocratique." This journal, edited by the Comte de
Bearhaven, has, for some years past, led the defence of liberal
principles and popular rights, with a faithfulness and ability worthy
of all praise.
*
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
heart-break 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 Lombard 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 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 a fountain were an
immortal spirit, that sung its song unceasingly, and without heeding
the vicissitudes around it; while one century embodied 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 the 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 splendor, it shall be Beatrice's task to nurse and serve
thee; and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfume 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
Doctor 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 thought-worn Doctor
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 Doctor
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 Doctor 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 Doctor
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 Lacryma."
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 Doctor 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 in 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 gem-like 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 nor verdure
among those antique haunts of men, until the heavy perfumes of Doctor
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 Doctor Rappaccini's garden, as if
something ugly and monstrous would have blasted his eye-sight, 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 day-light view of Beatrice; thus
bringing her rigidly and systematically within the limits of ordinary
experience. Least of all, while avoiding her sight, should Giovanni
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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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 Doctor
Rappaccini was involving him. But such
a suspicion, though it disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to restrain
him. The instant 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, he stood beneath his own window, in the open
area of Doctor 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 Doctor 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 life-time 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 under 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
queen-like 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 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 day-light 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 gem-like 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 maiden-like. 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
Doctor 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,
transmuted 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 Giovanni spend the night, nor fell asleep,
until the dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Doctor
Rappaccini's garden, whither his 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 gem-like 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 come, when it is doomed to vanish into
thin mist! Giovanni wrapt 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 bye," 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."
"Aye; 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 wo 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!"
Giovanni groaned and hid his face.
"Her father," continued Baglioni,
"was not restrained by natural affection from offering up his
child, in this horrible manner, as the victim of his insane zeal for
science. For--let us do him justice--he is as true a man of science as
ever distilled his own heart in an alembic. What, then, will be your
fate? Beyond a doubt, you are selected as the material of some new
experiment. Perhaps the result is to be death--perhaps a fate more
awful still! Rappaccini, with what he calls the interest of science
before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing."
"It is a dream!" muttered Giovanni to
himself, "surely it is a dream!"
"But," resumed the Professor, "be
of good cheer, son of my friend! It is not yet too late for the
rescue. Possibly, we may even succeed in bringing back this miserable
child within the limits of ordinary nature, from which her father's
madness has estranged her. Behold this little silver vase! It was
wrought by the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well
worthy to be a love-gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its
contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would have
rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous. Doubt not
that it will be as efficacious against those of Rappaccini. Bestow the
vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, and
hopefully await the result."
Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver
phial on the table, and withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce
its effect upon the young man's mind.
"We will thwart Rappaccini yet!"
thought he, chuckling to himself, as he descended the stairs.
"But, let us confess the truth of him, he is a wonderful man!--a
wonderful man
indeed! A vile empiric, however, in his practice, and therefore not to
be tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the medical
profession!"
Throughout Giovanni's whole acquaintance with
Beatrice, he had occasionally, as we have said, been haunted by dark
surmises as to her character. Yet, so thoroughly had she made herself
felt by him as a simple, natural, most affectionate and guileless
creature, that the image now held up by Professor Baglioni, looked as
strange and incredible, as if it were not in accordance with his own
original conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected
with his first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite
forget the bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the insect that
perished amid the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the
fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however, dissolving in the
pure light of her character, had no longer the efficacy of facts, but
were acknowledged as mistaken fantasies, by whatever testimony of the
senses they might appear to be substantiated. There is something truer
and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the
finger. On such better evidence, had Giovanni founded his confidence
in Beatrice, though rather by the necessary force of her high
attributes, than by any deep and generous faith on his part. But, now,
his spirit was incapable of sustaining itself at the height to which
the early enthusiasm of passion had exalted it; he fell down,
grovelling among earthly doubts, and defiled therewith the pure
whiteness of Beatrice's image. Not that he gave her up; he did but
distrust. He resolved to institute some decisive test that should
satisfy him, once for all, whether there were those dreadful
peculiarities in her physical nature, which could not be supposed to
exist without some corresponding monstrosity of soul. His eyes, gazing
down afar, might have deceived him as to the lizard, the insect, and
the flowers. But
if he could witness, at the distance of a few paces, the sudden blight
of one fresh and healthful flower in Beatrice's hand, there would be
room for no further question. With this idea, he hastened to the
florist's, and purchased a bouquet that was still gemmed with the
morning dew-drops.
It was now the customary hour of his daily
interview with Beatrice. Before descending into the garden, Giovanni
failed not to look at his figure in the mirror; a vanity to be
expected in a beautiful young man, yet, as displaying itself at that
troubled and feverish moment, the token of a certain shallowness of
feeling and insincerity of character. He did gaze, however, and said
to himself, that his features had never before possessed so rich a
grace, nor his eyes such vivacity, nor his cheeks so warm a hue of
superabundant life.
"At least," thought he, "her
poison has not yet insinuated itself into my system. I am no flower to
perish in her grasp!"
With that thought, he turned his eyes on the
bouquet, which he had never once laid aside from his hand. A thrill of
indefinable horror shot through his frame, on perceiving that those
dewy flowers were already beginning to droop; they wore the aspect of
things that had been fresh and lovely, yesterday. Giovanni grew white
as marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring at his own
reflection there, as at the likeness of something frightful. He
remembered Baglioni's remark about the fragrance that seemed to
pervade the chamber. It must have been the poison in his breath! Then
he shuddered--shuddered at himself! Recovering from his stupor, he
began to watch, with curious eye, a spider that was busily at work,
hanging its web from the antique cornice of the apartment, crossing
and re-crossing the artful system of interwoven lines, as vigorous and
active a spider as ever dangled from an old ceiling. Giovanni bent
towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long breath. The spider
suddenly
ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in the
body of the small artizan. Again Giovanni sent forth a breath, deeper,
longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of his heart; he knew
not whether he were wicked or only desperate. The spider made a
convulsive gripe with his limbs, and hung dead across the window.
"Accursed! Accursed!" muttered
Giovanni, addressing himself. "Hast thou grown so poisonous, that
this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?"
At that moment, a rich, sweet voice came
floating up from the garden: "Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the
hour! Why tarriest thou! Come down!"
"Yes," muttered Giovanni again.
"She is the only being whom my breath may not slay! Would that it
might!"
He rushed down, and in an instant, was standing
before the bright and loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago, his wrath
and despair had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so
much as to wither her by a glance. But, with her actual presence,
there came influences which had too real an existence to be at once
shaken off; recollections of the delicate and benign power of her
feminine nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious calm;
recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart, when
the pure fountain had been unsealed from its depths, and made visible
in its transparency to his mental eye; recollections which, had
Giovanni known how to estimate them, would have assured him that all
this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist
of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a
heavenly angel. Incapable as he was of such high faith, still her
presence had not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni's rage was quelled
into an aspect of sullen insensibility. Beatrice,
with a quick spiritual sense, immediately felt that there was a gulf
of blackness between them, which neither he nor she could pass. They
walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus to the marble
fountain, and to its pool of water on the ground, in the midst of
which grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was
affrighted at the eager enjoyment--the appetite, as it were--with
which he found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.
"Beatrice," asked he abruptly,
"whence came this shrub!"
"My father created it," answered she,
with simplicity.
"Created it! created it!" repeated
Giovanni. "What mean you, Beatrice?"
"He is a man fearfully acquainted with the
secrets of nature," replied Beatrice; "and, at the hour when
I first drew breath, this plant sprang from the soil, the offspring of
his science, of his intellect, while I was but his earthly child.
Approach it not!" continued she, observing with terror that
Giovanni was drawing nearer to the shrub. "It has qualities that
you little dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni--I grew up and blossomed
with the plant, and was nourished with its breath. It was my sister,
and I loved it with a human affection: for--alas! hast thou not
suspected it? there was an awful doom."
Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her
that Beatrice paused and trembled. But her faith in his tenderness
reassured her, and made her blush that she had doubted for an instant.
"There was an awful doom," she
continued,--"the effect of my father's fatal love of
science--which estranged me from all society of my kind. Until Heaven
sent thee, dearest Giovanni, Oh! how lonely was thy poor
Beatrice!"
"Was it a hard doom?" asked Giovanni,
fixing his eyes upon her.
"Only of late have I known how hard it
was," answered she tenderly. "Oh, yes; but my heart was
torpid, and therefore quiet."
Giovanni's rage broke forth from his sullen
gloom like a lightning-flash out of a dark cloud.
"Accursed one!" cried he, with
venomous scorn and anger. "And finding thy solitude wearisome,
thou hast severed me, likewise, from all the warmth of life, and
enticed me into thy region of unspeakable horror!"
"Giovanni!" exclaimed Beatrice,
turning her large bright eyes upon his face. The force of his words
had not found its way into her mind; she was merely thunder-struck.
"Yes, poisonous thing!" repeated
Giovanni, beside himself with passion. "Thou hast done it! Thou
hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made
me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as
thyself--a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now--if our breath
be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others--let us join our
lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!"
"What has befallen me?" murmured
Beatrice, with a low moan out of her heart. "Holy Virgin pity me,
a poor heartbroken child!"
"Thou! Dost thou pray?" cried
Giovanni, still with the same fiendish scorn. "Thy very prayers,
as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes;
let us pray! Let us to church, and dip our fingers in the holy water
at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence.
Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in
the likeness of holy symbols!"
"Giovanni," said Beatrice calmly, for
her grief was beyond passion, "Why dost thou join thyself with me
thus in those terrible words? I, it is true, am the horrible thing
thou namest me. But thou!--what hast thou to do, save with one
other shudder at my hideous misery, to go forth out of the garden and
mingle with thy race, and forget that there ever crawled on earth such
a monster as poor Beatrice?"
"Dost thou pretend ignorance?" asked
Giovanni, scowling upon her. "Behold! This power have I gained
from the pure daughter of Rappaccini!"
There was a swarm of summer-insects flitting
through the air, in search of the food promised by the flower-odors of
the fatal garden. They circled round Giovanni's head, and were
evidently attracted towards him by the same influence which had drawn
them, for an instant, within the sphere of several of the shrubs. He
sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at Beatrice, as at
least a score of the insects fell dead upon the ground.
"I see it! I see it!" shrieked
Beatrice. "It is my father's fatal science? No, no, Giovanni; it
was not I! Never, never! I dreamed only to love thee, and be with thee
a little time, and so to let thee pass away, leaving but thine image
in mine heart. For, Giovanni--believe it--though my body be nourished
with poison, my spirit is God's creature, and craves love as its daily
food. But my father!--he has united us in this fearful sympathy. Yes;
spurn me!--tread upon me!--kill me! Oh, what is death, after such
words as thine? But it was not I! Not for a world of bliss would I
have done it!"
Giovanni's passion had exhausted itself in its
outburst from his lips. There now came across him a sense, mournful,
and not without tenderness, of the intimate and peculiar relationship
between Beatrice and himself. They stood, as it were, in an utter
solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest
throng of human life. Ought not, then, the desert of humanity around
them to press this insulated pair closer together? If they should be
cruel to one another, who was there to be kind to them? Besides,
thought Giovanni, might there not still be a hope of his returning
within the limits of ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice--the
redeemed Beatrice--by the hand? Oh, weak, and selfish, and unworthy
spirit, that could dream of an earthly union and earthly happiness as
possible, after such deep love had been so bitterly wronged as was
Beatrice's love by Giovanni's blighting words! No, no; there could be
no such hope. She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across
the borders of Time--she must bathe her hurts in some fount of
Paradise, and forget her grief in the light of immortality--and there
be well!
But Giovanni did not know it.
"Dear Beatrice," said he, approaching
her, while she shrank away, as always at his approach, but now with a
different impulse--"dearest Beatrice, our fate is not yet so
desperate. Behold! There is a medicine, potent, as a wise physician
has assured me, and almost divine in its efficacy. It is composed of
ingredients the most opposite to those by which thy awful father has
brought this calamity upon thee and me. It is distilled of blessed
herbs. Shall we not quaff it together, and thus be purified from
evil?"
"Give it me!" said Beatrice, extending
her hand to receive the little silver phial which Giovanni took from
his bosom. She added, with a peculiar emphasis: "I will
drink--but do thou await the result."
She put Baglioni's antidote to her lips; and, at
the same moment, the figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal, and
came slowly towards the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man
of science seemed to gaze with a triumphant expression at the
beautiful youth and maiden, as might an artist who should spend his
life in achieving a picture or a group of statuary, and finally be
satisfied with his success. He paused--his bent form grew erect with
conscious power, he spread out his hand over them, in the attitude of
a father imploring a blessing upon his children.
But those were the same hands that had thrown poison into the stream
of their lives! Giovanni trembled. Beatrice shuddered very nervously,
and pressed her hand upon her heart.
"My daughter," said Rappaccini,
"thou art no longer lonely in the world! Pluck one of those
precious gems from thy sister shrub, and bid thy bridegroom wear it in
his bosom. It will not harm him now! My science, and the sympathy
between thee and him, have so wrought within his system, that he now
stands apart from common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and
triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then, through the world, most
dear to one another, and dreadful to all besides!"
"My father," said Beatrice,
feebly--and still, as she spoke, she kept her hand upon her
heart--"wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy
child?"
"Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini.
"What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be
endowed with marvellous gifts, against which no power nor strength
could avail an enemy? Misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a
breath? Misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou,
then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all
evil, and capable of none?"
"I would fain have been loved, not
feared," murmured Beatrice, sinking down upon the
ground.--"But now it matters not; I am going, father, where the
evil, which thou hast striven to mingle with my being, will pass away
like a dream--like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which
will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell,
Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart--but they,
too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first,
more poison in thy nature than in mine?"
To Beatrice--so radically had her earthly part
been wrought upon by Rappaccini's skill--as poison had been life,
so the powerful antidote was death. And thus the poor victim of man's
ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all
such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her
father and Giovanni. Just at that moment, Professor Pietro Baglioni
looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph
mixed with horror, to the thunder-stricken man of science: "Rappaccini!
Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?"