"I marvel how your worship finds time to read such
nonsense, among your graver studies."
"By the bye," said the Professor, looking uneasily about him, "what
singular fragrance is this in your apartment? Is it the perfume of
your gloves? It is faint, but delicious, and yet, after all, by no
means agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it would make
me ill. It is like the breath of a flower- but I see no flowers in the
chamber."
"Nor are there any," replied Giovanni, who had turned pale as the
Professor spoke; "nor, I think, is there any fragrance, except in your
worship's imagination. Odors, being a sort of element combined of
the sensual and the spiritual, are apt to deceive us in this manner.
The recollection of a perfume- the bare idea of it- may easily be
mistaken for a present reality."
"Aye; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,"
said Baglioni; "and were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that
of some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough
to be imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard,
tinctures his medicaments with odors richer than those of Araby.
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