Giovanni hid his face.

“Her father’s natural love for his child,” continued Baglioni, “did not stop him from making her the victim of his insane zeal for science; for, let us do him justice,[26] he is as true a man of science. 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, will hesitate at nothing.”

“It is a dream,” murmured Giovanni to himself; “it must be a dream.”

“But,” said the professor, “cheer up, son of my friend. It is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly we may even bring back this miserable child within the limits of ordinary nature, from which her father’s madness has taken her. Look at this little silver vase! It was made by the hands of the famous Benvenuto Cellini,[27] and is worthy to be a love gift to the most beautiful girl in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would make the most virulent poisons of the Borgias[28] harmless. I do not doubt that it will be as effective against those of Rappaccini. Give the vase to your Beatrice, and wait for the result.”

Baglioni put a small silver vase on the table and went out, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young man’s mind.

“We will fight Rappaccini,” thought he, as he went down the stairs; “but, to tell the truth of him, he is a wonderful man – a wonderful man not to be tolerated by those[29] who respect the good old rules of the medical profession.”

As long as Giovanni had known Beatrice, he had had some doubts as to her character; yet she seemed to him such a simple and natural girl, that the image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked strange and incredible. True, he could not quite forget the bouquet that faded in her hands, and the insect killed in the air by the fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however, were now taken as mistaken fantasies. 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 built his faith in Beatrice. But now he was not able to stay at the height to which the early enthusiasm of passion had raised him; he fell down, suffering from doubts. Not that he gave her up; he did but distrust.[30] He decided to make a test that would satisfy him, once for all,[31] whether there was something dreadful in her physical nature and something monstrous in her 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 steps, the sudden fading of one fresh flower in Beatrice’s hand, there would be room for no further question.[32] With this idea he bought a bouquet of fresh flowers cut only that morning.

It was now the usual hour of his daily interview with Beatrice. Before going down into the garden, Giovanni looked at his figure in the mirror, – only natural for a beautiful young man, yet this, probably, proved a certain shallowness of feeling and insincerity of character. He said to himself that his features had never before been so good, nor his eyes so bright.

“At least,” thought he, “her poison has not yet got into my system. I am no flower to die in her hands.”

With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had held in his hand for some time. A thrill of horror shot through him when he saw that those flowers were already beginning to fade. Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there as at something frightful. He remembered Baglioni’s remark about the fragrance that he felt in the room. It must have been the poison in his breath! Recovering from his stupor, he began to look for a spider in the corners of his room. He saw an active spider and breathed at it. The spider suddenly stopped moving; the web vibrated together with its body, and the spider hung dead in the web.