Whatever had
looked ugly, was now beautiful; or, if incapable of such a change,
it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half-ideas, which
throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect
consciousness. Thus did Giovanni spend the night, nor fell asleep,
until the dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Doctor
Rappaccini's garden, whither his dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the
sun in his due season, and flinging his beams upon the young man's
eyelids, awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he
became sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand- in his
right hand- the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own,
when he was on the point of plucking one of the gem-like flowers. On
the back of that hand there was now a purple print, like that of
four small fingers, and the likeness of a slender thumb upon his
wrist.
Oh, how stubbornly does love- or even that cunning semblance of
love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root
into the heart- how stubbornly does it hold its faith, until the
moment come, when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni
wrapt a handkerchief about his hand, and wondered what evil thing
had stung him, and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice.
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