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.
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