The scene soon terminated. Whether
Doctor 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.
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