Mosses from an old manse
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 recrossing 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 artisan. 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 thunderstruck.
“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 heart-broken 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 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? O, 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 vial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added, with a
peculiar emphasis, “I will drink; but do thou await the result.”