The young man
rejoiced, that, in the heart of the barren city, he had the
privilege of overlooking this spot of lovely and luxuriant vegetation.
It would serve, he said to himself, as a symbolic language, to keep
him in communion with nature. Neither the sickly and thought-worn
Doctor Giacomo Rappaccini, it is true, nor his brilliant daughter,
were now visible; so that Giovanni could not determine how much of the
singularity which he attributed to both, was due to their own
qualities, and how much to his wonder-working fancy. But he was
inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter.
In the course of the day, he paid his respects to Signor Pietro
Baglioni, Professor of Medicine in the University, a physician of
eminent repute, to whom Giovanni had brought a letter of introduction.
The Professor was an elderly personage, apparently of genial nature,
and habits that might almost be called jovial; he kept the young man
to dinner, and made himself very agreeable by the freedom and
liveliness of his conversation, especially when warmed by a flask or
two of Tuscan wine.
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