"
"Giovanni! my poor Giovanni!" answered the Professor, with a calm
expression of pity, "I know this wretched girl far better than
yourself. You shall hear the truth in respect to the poisoner
Rappaccini, and his poisonous daughter. Yes; poisonous as she is
beautiful! Listen; for even should you do violence to my gray hairs,
it shall not silence me. That old fable of the Indian woman has become
a truth, by the deep and deadly science of Rappaccini, and in the
person of the lovely Beatrice!"
Giovanni groaned and hid his face.
"Her father," continued Baglioni, "was not restrained by natural
affection from offering up his child, in this horrible manner, as
the victim of his insane zeal for science. For- let us do him justice-
he is as true a man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an
alembic. What, then, will be your fate? Beyond a doubt, you are
selected as the material of some new experiment. Perhaps the result is
to be death- perhaps a fate more awful still! Rappaccini, with what he
calls the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at
nothing.
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