Лучшие любовные истории / The Best Love Stories

“Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,” said Baglioni. “Our friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, makes medicines with rich odors. Doubtless, the learned Signora Beatrice would give her patients draughts as sweet as a girl’s breath; but woe to him that sips them!^[24]”

Giovanni’s face showed many emotions. The tone in which the professor spoke of the lovely daughter of Rappaccini was hard for him to hear; and yet the view of her character opposite to his own gave way to a thousand suspicions. But he tried hard not to pay attention to them and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover’s perfect faith.

“Signor professor,” said he, “you were my father’s friend; perhaps, too, you want to behave like a true friend of his son. I should feel nothing towards you save respect; but, signor, there is one subject on which we must not speak. You do not know the Signora Beatrice.”

“Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!” answered the professor, with an expression of pity, “I know this girl better than yourself. You must hear the truth about the poisoner Rappaccini and his poisonous daughter; yes, as poisonous as she is beautiful. Listen; for, even should you do violence to my gray hairs, it shall not silence me.^[25] That old tale of the Indian woman has become a truth by the deadly science of Rappaccini and in the person of the lovely Beatrice.”

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.

“Cursed! cursed!” murmured Giovanni, addressing himself. “Have you grown so poisonous that this deadly insect is killed by your breath?”

At that moment a rich, sweet voice came up from the garden.

“Giovanni! Giovanni! Come down!”

“Yes,” murmured Giovanni again. “She is the only being whom my breath may not kill! Would that it might!^[33]”

He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his rage and despair had been so fierce that he desired nothing so much as to kill her by a glance; but in her presence all this ugly mystery seemed an illusion, and he believed that the real Beatrice was an angel. He was not able to reach such high faith, still her presence had not lost its magic for him. Giovanni’s rage had left him, but the young man was gloomy. Beatrice immediately felt that there was blackness between them which neither he nor she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came to the marble fountain and to its pool of water on the ground, where grew the shrub with the purple blossoms. Giovanni was frightened by his delight – the appetite – with which he was inhaling the fragrance of the flowers.

“Beatrice,” asked he, “where did this shrub come from?”

“My father created it,” answered she simply.

“Created it! created it!” repeated Giovanni. “What do you mean, Beatrice?”

“He knows the secrets of Nature,” replied Beatrice; “and, at the hour when I was born, this plant sprang from the ground, the child of his science, of his intellect, while I was but his human child. Do not approach it!” continued she, observing with terror that Giovanni was coming nearer to the shrub. “I, dearest Giovanni, – I grew up and blossomed with the plant, and I inhaled its breath. It was my sister, and I loved it as if it were human. Alas! – did you not suspect it?”

Here Giovanni looked so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and trembled. But her faith in his love was so great that she had no doubt 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.^[34] Until Heaven sent you, dearest Giovanni, oh, how lonely was your poor Beatrice!”

“Was it a hard doom?” asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.

“Only lately have I known how hard it was,” answered she, tenderly. “Oh, yes; but my heart was quiet.”

Giovanni’s rage broke through like a lightning out of a dark cloud.

“The cursed one!” cried he with anger. “You have cut me also from all the warmth of life and dragged me into your region of horror!”

“Giovanni!” exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes upon his face.

“Yes, poisonous thing!” repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion. “You have done it! You have filled my veins with poison! You have made me as hateful, as ugly and deadly as yourself – a world’s monster! Now, if our breath is as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one kiss of hatred, and so die!”

“What has happened to me?” murmured Beatrice. “Holy Virgin,^[35] pity me, a poor heart-broken child!”

“Do you pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same rage. “Your prayers, as they come from your lips, fill the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us go to church! They that come after us will be killed!”

“Giovanni,” said Beatrice, “why do you join yourself with me in those terrible words? I, it is true, am horrible, as you say. But you, – you can go out of the garden and forget there ever was on earth such a monster as poor Beatrice?”

“Do you pretend ignorance?^[36]” asked Giovanni. “Look! I have received this power from the daughter of Rappaccini.”

There were some insects flying through the air, and round Giovanni’s head, and were evidently attracted towards him by the same fragrance as that of the shrubs. He breathed at them, and smiled bitterly at Beatrice as some 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 you and be with you a little time, and to let you go away, leaving your image in my heart; for, Giovanni, believe it, though my body is filled with poison, my soul belongs to God, and wants love as its daily food. Kill me! Oh, what is death after such words as yours? But it was not I. I would never have done it.”

They stood, cut off from all the human race. If they were cruel to one another, who would be kind to them? Besides, thought Giovanni, there was still a hope of his returning within the limits of ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice by the hand? O, weak, and selfish, and unworthy man, that could dream of an earthly happiness, after such deep love had been shattered as was Beatrice’s love by Giovanni’s cruel words! No, no; there could be no such hope. She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of Time – she must forget her grief in the light of immortality.

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. Look! there is a medicine, made up of ingredients opposite to those by which your awful father has brought this trouble upon you and me. Let us take it together and be saved!”

“Give it me!” said Beatrice. She added, “I will drink it; wait for 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 came near, the pale man of science seemed to gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful young man and girl, as might an artist who had spent his life in painting a picture and finally was satisfied with his success. He paused; he held his hands over them; and those were the same hands that had thrown poison into their veins. Giovanni trembled. Beatrice pressed her hand upon her heart.

“My daughter,” said Rappaccini, “you are no longer lonely in the world. Pluck one of those flowers from your sister shrub and let your bridegroom wear it. It will not harm him now. My science and the sympathy between you and him have so changed his system that he now is different from common men, as you are from ordinary women. Pass on through the world, most dear to one another and dreadful to all others!”

“My father,” said Beatrice, weakly, – and still as she spoke she kept her hand upon her heart, “why did you bring this doom upon your child?”

“Doom!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What do you mean, foolish girl? Do you call doom the power that no enemy has – doom, to be as terrible as you are beautiful? Would you prefer to be a weak woman?”

“I would prefer to be loved, not feared,” murmured Beatrice, sinking down upon the ground. “But now it does not matter. I am going, father, where the evil which you put in me will pass away like a dream – like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer poison my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Your words of hatred are like lead within my heart; but they, too, will fall away as I go up. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in your nature than in mine?”

To Beatrice, for whom poison had been life, the powerful antidote was death; and thus the poor victim of man’s zeal for science died there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni.