Mosses from an old manse
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.”