Hawthorne, Nathaniel / 2008-06-29 00:00:00
1844
TWICE-TOLD TALES
RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A YOUNG MAN, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from
the more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the
University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold
ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an
old edifice, which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a
Paduan noble, and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the
armorial bearings of a family long since extinct. The young
stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country,
recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an
occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a
partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno. These reminiscences
and associations, together with the tendency to heart-break natural to
a young man for the first time out of his native sphere, caused
Giovanni to sigh heavily, as he looked around the desolate and
ill-furnished apartment.
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