Don t burn the candle at both ends story narration

The Wesleyan anthology of

Science Fiction . . . .

Edited by Arthur B. Evans,

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Joan Gordon,

Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and

Carol McGuirk

w e s l e y a n u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

2010 © SF-TH Inc.

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The editors would like to thank DePauw University,

the University of Iowa, and Trent University for their

generous support in making this teaching

anthology possible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Wesleyan anthology of science fiction /

edited by Arthur B. Evans . . . [et al.].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8195-6954-7 (cloth: alk. paper)

—ISBN 978-0-8195-6955-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Science fiction, American. 2. Science fiction, English. I. Evans, Arthur B.

PS648.S3W39 2010

813′.0876208—dc22

2009053144

5 4 3 2 1

To

rIchard dale mulleN,

founder and benefactor of

Science Fiction Studies

contents . . . .

Introduction xi

chroNologIcal lIStINg of StorIeS Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) 1

Jules Verne, from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) 26

H. G. Wells, “The Star” (1897) 39

E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909) 50

Edmond Hamilton, “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) 79

Leslie F. Stone, “The Conquest of Gola” (1931) 96

C. L. Moore, “Shambleau” (1933) 110

Stanley Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) 136

Isaac Asimov, “Reason” (1941) 160

Cliff ord D. Simak, “Desertion” (1944) 177

Theodore Sturgeon, “Thunder and Roses” (1947) 189

Judith Merril, “That Only a Mother” (1948) 211

Fritz Leiber, “Coming Attraction” (1950) 221

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) 234

Arthur C. Clarke, “The Sentinel” (1951) 241

Robert Sheckley, “Specialist” (1953) 250

William Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth” (1953) 266

Alfred Bester, “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954) 283

Avram Davidson, “The Golem” (1955) 303

Cordwainer Smith, “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955) 309

Robert A. Heinlein, “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959) 324

J. G. Ballard, “The Cage of Sand” (1962) 337

R. A. Laff erty, “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965) 359

Harlan Ellison, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965) 367

Frederik Pohl, “Day Million” (1966) 379

Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) 385

viii coNteNtS

Samuel R. Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah . . .” (1967) 405

Pamela Zoline, “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) 415

Robert Silverberg, “Passengers” (1968) 430

Brian Aldiss, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” (1969) 443

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Nine Lives” (1969) 452

Frank Herbert, “Seed Stock” (1970) 477

Stanislaw Lem, “The Seventh Voyage,” from The Star Diaries (1971) 490

Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) 507

James Tiptree Jr., “And I Awoke and Found Me Here

on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) 516

John Varley, “Air Raid” (1977) 525

Carol Emshwiller, “Abominable” (1980) 539

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome” (1982) 547

Octavia E. Butler, “Speech Sounds” (1983) 566

Nancy Kress, “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (1985) 580

Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986) 587

Kate Wilhelm, “Forever Yours, Anna” (1987) 598

Bruce Sterling, “We See Things Differently” (1989) 611

Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi” (1989) 630

Eileen Gunn, “Computer Friendly” (1989) 637

John Kessel, “Invaders” (1990) 654

Gene Wolfe, “Useful Phrases” (1992) 675

Greg Egan, “Closer” (1992) 683

James Patrick Kelly, “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) 698

Geoff Ryman, “Everywhere” (1999) 717

Charles Stross, “Rogue Farm” (2003) 727

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (2008) 742

thematIc lIStINg of StorIeS Alien Encounters

C. L. Moore, “Shambleau” (1933) 110

Stanley Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) 136

Arthur C. Clarke, “The Sentinel” (1951) 241

Robert Sheckley, “Specialist” (1953) 250

Robert Silverberg, “Passengers” (1968) 430

Nancy Kress, “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (1985) 580

coNteNtS ix

Gene Wolfe, “Useful Phrases” (1992) 675

James Patrick Kelly, “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) 698

Apocalypse and Post-apocalypse

H. G. Wells, “The Star” (1897) 39

Fritz Leiber, “Coming Attraction” (1950) 221

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) 234

J. G. Ballard, “The Cage of Sand” (1962) 337

Octavia E. Butler, “Speech Sounds” (1983) 566

Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi” (1989) 630

Artificial/Posthuman Life-forms

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) 1

Isaac Asimov, “Reason” (1941) 160

Alfred Bester, “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954) 283

Avram Davidson, “The Golem” (1955) 303

Brian Aldiss, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” (1969) 443

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Nine Lives” (1969) 452

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (2008) 742

Computers and Virtual Reality

Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) 385

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome” (1982) 547

Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986) 587

Eileen Gunn, “Computer Friendly” (1989) 637

Evolution and Environment

Jules Verne, from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) 26

Edmond Hamilton, “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) 79

Clifford D. Simak, “Desertion” (1944) 177

Frank Herbert, “Seed Stock” (1970) 477

Charles Stross, “Rogue Farm” (2003) 727

Gender and Sexuality

Leslie F. Stone, “The Conquest of Gola” (1931) 96

Frederik Pohl, “Day Million” (1966) 379

x coNteNtS

Samuel R. Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah . . .” (1967) 405

Pamela Zoline, “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) 415

Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) 507

James Tiptree Jr., “And I Awoke and Found Me Here

on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) 516

Carol Emshwiller, “Abominable” (1980) 539

Greg Egan, “Closer” (1992) 683

Time Travel and Alternate History

Robert A. Heinlein, “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959) 324

Stanislaw Lem, “The Seventh Voyage” from Star Diaries (1971) 490

John Varley, “Air Raid” (1977) 525

Kate Wilhelm, “Forever Yours, Anna” (1987) 598

John Kessel, “Invaders” (1990) 654

Utopias/Dystopias

E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909) 50

R. A. Lafferty, “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965) 359

Harlan Ellison, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965) 367

Geoff Ryman, “Everywhere” (1999) 717

War and Conflict

Theodore Sturgeon, “Thunder and Roses” (1947) 189

Judith Merril, “That Only a Mother” (1948) 211

William Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth” (1953) 266

Cordwainer Smith, “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955) 309

Bruce Sterling, “We See Things Differently” (1989) 611

Acknowledgments 757

Further Reading 761

xi

Introduction . . . .

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction was conceived and developed by the editors of the scholarly journal Science Fiction Studies (SfS). It refl ects no single editor’s viewpoint but rather a consensus among us that a good an- thology should include stories ranging from the nineteenth century to today, should exemplify a number of themes and styles characteristic of the genre, and should represent both the best and—not always the same thing—the most teachable stories in the fi eld. While our journal is known for a lively engagement with critical and cul- tural theory, it is also committed to exploring the disparate body of texts grouped under the rubric “science fi ction” (sf ). Any sf anthology necessarily declares a provisional canon of classics by prescribing a limited course of essential reading. Canonization is a dubious as well as a diffi cult enterprise, but we hope that our canon is less prescriptive than provocative. Our goal has been to suggest how varied the genre is, to showcase writers from the justly famous (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin) to the unjustly neglected (Robert Sheckley, R. A. Laff erty, William Tenn), and to serve as a starting point for further reading. Many of the stories reprinted here, especially those published before 1960, fi rst appeared in the pulp magazines or later digests that served as the chief training ground for sf writers. Authors who published in these formats often spent their careers writing for pennies a word—if that—while in our own day, high-budget sf fi lms and television series continue to recycle their ideas without so much as a screen credit. Despite the ongoing popularity of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, there was no signifi cant North American market for full-length sf novels until the 1950s. The pulp magazines and postwar sf digests were therefore cru- cial publishing venues for the fi rst generations of American sf writers, from C. L. Moore and Edmond Hamilton to Robert A. Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon. Their work appeared alongside reprinted tales of Wells, Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe, so that early readers of the pulps were being simul- taneously introduced to new writers and immersed in some of the best nineteenth-century sf. Although today’s North American sf market is geared

xii INtroductIoN

predominantly toward novels (the form in which most writers now make their reputations), a number of professional and semiprofessional venues— magazines, reprint anthologies, and, more rarely, original short-fiction an- thologies—still publish short sf. The more recently published selections in this volume strongly demonstrate the form’s continuing vitality.

Historical Origins and the Megatext

Origin narratives are always shaped by complex historical and ideological perspectives. Depending on the sf historian’s particular assumptions, the genre can trace its roots back to Lucian of Samosata’s satirical second- century story of a trip to the moon in his True History. Alternatively, the case has been made that sf began with the utopias and tales of great voy- ages of discovery written from the Renaissance through the eighteenth cen- tury—voyages echoed in the nineteenth century by Jules Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires. Many historians have argued that sf ’s origins lie in the techno-scientific cataclysms of the Industrial Revolution; in this context Mary Shelley’s cautionary tale Frankenstein (1818) is of particular interest. A different reading locates the genre’s origins in Darwinian views of evolu- tion, which shaped the scientific romances of H. G. Wells. Still others would set the starting point in the early twentieth century, arguing that science fiction developed generic coherence only after being popularized in the pulp magazines of the 1920s. This “new” genre, originally named scientifiction in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, saw rapid expansion in the pages of pulps such as Wonder Stories and Weird Tales, where Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) and Moore’s “Shambleau” (1933) first appeared. While each of these positions about the genre’s “true” origins has its defenders and the debate is unlikely ever to be resolved, these very different accounts, when taken together, offer striking testimony to science fiction’s complex history. At its core, science fiction dramatizes the adventures and perils of change. Although not always set in the future, sf ’s consistent emphasis on transfor- mation through time demonstrates the increasing significance of the future to Western techno-cultural consciousness. At the same time, sf retains its links to older literary forms and maintains strong generic connections to its literary cousins epic, fantasy, gothic horror, and satire. One of the more interesting developments in contemporary sf is the near disappearance of genre boundaries in such stories as John Kessel’s postmodern “Invaders” (1990). Meanwhile, sf elements are now frequently incorporated into the work of many writers usually associated with the literary mainstream, re- sulting in slipstream fictions by such writers as Thomas Pynchon, Jeff Noon, and Margaret Atwood.

INtroductIoN xiii

The original subtitle of Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) was “An Inven- tion,” and as the genre’s tangled history suggests, sf is constantly reinvent- ing itself, responding to contemporary scientific and cultural concerns and adapting or challenging prevailing narrative conventions. Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961; trans. 1970), for instance, gains much of its impact from how it revises the assumptions of earlier first-contact stories such as Stanley G. Weinbaum’s optimistic “A Martian Odyssey” (1934). By stressing the difficulties—indeed, the impossibility—of comprehending the alien, Lem intervenes in sf ’s ongoing generic dialogue, showing that first contact might in the event be more of a non-contact. In contrast, James Tiptree Jr.’s “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) takes a queer-feminist approach to first-contact conventions, with its dire tale of loving the alien all too well. Perhaps because of its twentieth-century history of publication in spe- cialized or niche formats such as pulp magazines, mass-market paperbacks, and sf digests, writers in the genre maintain unusually strong links with each other and with the community of sf readers. Writers of sf conduct long- distance conversations across generations, cultures, social settings, and his- torical challenges. Like all complex cultural forms, sf is rooted in past prac- tices and shared protocols, tropes, and traditions—all of which contribute to what is often called the sf megatext. A fictive universe that includes all the sf stories that have ever been told, the sf megatext is a place of shared images, situations, plots, characters, settings, and themes generated across a multiplicity of media, including centuries of diverse literary fictions and, more recently, video and computer games, graphic novels, big-budget films, and even advertising. Readers and viewers apply their own prior experience of science fiction—their own knowledge of the sf megatext—to each new story or film they encounter. Looking back to one of the earliest novels associated with sf, it is easy to see that the monstrous Creature in Frankenstein is a precursor of both Hawthorne’s Beatrice Rappaccini and the artificial intelligence hal in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Mark Twain’s Con- necticut Yankee informs Wells’s Time Traveller, who in turn establishes the basic template for all the time-travel tales of the twentieth century, including Heinlein’s “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959), which nonetheless offers its own original twist. The sf megatext encompasses specific characters (the mad scientist, the renegade robot, the savvy engineer, the mysterious alien, the powerful arti- ficial intelligence), environments (the enclosures of a spaceship, an alien landscape, the inner space of subjective experience), events (nuclear and

xiv INtroductIoN

other apocalypses, galactic conflicts, alien encounters), and, of particular significance, ethical and political concerns (questions about scientific re- sponsibility, about encounters with otherness, and about shifting definitions of what it means to be human). Every element in the megatext has been re- imagined many times; these reimaginings form the rich intertextual back- drop behind and between all sf stories. The more familiar readers are with the sf megatext, the more readily they will find their way into and through new stories. More experienced readers can appreciate how any particular work both depends and expands on the stories that have preceded it. William Gibson’s celebrated cyberpunk novels and stories—“Burning Chrome” (1982), for instance—borrowed many plot elements from familiar hard sf and noir conventions at the same time that they expanded the sf universe by challenging readers to imagine radically intimate relationships between human beings and increasingly pervasive cybernetic technologies. The impact of Gibson’s fiction lay in its revisionary use of familiar figures such as the cyborg to reveal the degree to which con- temporary techno-scientific culture has itself become science-fictionalized. Stories such as Greg Egan’s “Closer” (1992) and Charles Stross’s “Rogue Farm” (2003) build on cyberpunk’s posthuman foundations in their further explorations of the human-machine interface. In general, techno-scientific verisimilitude (not quite the same thing as scientific accuracy) is considered to be a sine qua non of works in the genre. More particularly, stories about science and technology constitute a sig- nificant strand of the sf megatext, from the dystopian nightmare of E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909), to the efforts of lunar explorers to decode the meaning of the mysterious alien artifact in Clarke’s “The Sen- tinel” (1951), to James Patrick Kelly’s revisionary story about the “cold equa- tions” of the physical universe in “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995). From the perspective of the sf megatext, every story is in dialogue with others in the genre, even as it aims to say something new. Like “Chicken Little,” the teem- ing, amorphous protein source of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s novel The Space Merchants (1952), the megatext is always growing and chang- ing, continually fed by new texts, new scientific speculation, new historical events, and new readers. Although authors in the genre share many concerns, they take diverse historical and cultural positions. They extrapolate unique futures, although many—from Heinlein, Le Guin, and Gibson to Frank Herbert and Cord- wainer Smith—set much of their fiction in different quadrants of one par- ticular future. Such writers settle in to explore the universes of their own making, their own personal megatexts. Some of our selections, such as

INtroductIoN xv

Asimov’s “Reason” (1941) and Smith’s “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955), suggest in miniature their authors’ consistent concerns, while other stories, including Heinlein’s “ ‘All You Zombies—’” and Herbert’s “Seed Stock” (1970), at first glance appear to be atypical. Our headnotes outline the author’s place in the genre and sketch the relationship of each selected story to the author’s work as a whole. As editors, we have aimed to include stories that not only repay a chrono- logical approach, illustrating sf ’s generic evolution, but that also intersect with some of the genre’s most frequently recurring topics. Among those spe- cifically highlighted here are the alien encounter, apocalypse, dystopia, gen- der and sexuality, time travel, and virtual reality.

Reading Sf

Readers who are new to science fiction learn new ways of reading. Many of the genre’s stories are set in the future, although its worlds are usually linked by extrapolation—a logic of projection—back to our own. Readers of sf must not only adjust their time-space positioning but also learn to nego- tiate connections between individual tales and the sf megatext. Further, they must often deal with neologisms (newly coined words) and other conjectural vocabulary that require them to fill in the semantic blanks with their imagi- nations. In contrast to mainstream fiction, science fiction represents worlds that do not exist here and now, although their existence might be possible in some other part of the universe or, more often, some other time. That time is usually ahead of readers: the future. Simplifying in the extreme, we might say that realist fiction writes about what exists while fantasy fiction deals with hopes and fears and dreams—emotional states rather than ideas. Science fiction, in contrast, writes about things that might be, although they are not yet and may never come to be. Science fiction’s “worlds of if ” (to cite the title of a Weinbaum story of 1935) are connected to the readers’ world through a logical (linear, causal, extrapolative) relationship, yet these sf worlds can also be metaphorical or symbolic. As Darko Suvin has argued, sf is a literature of cognitive estrange- ment that shows readers futures in which the present has shifted or meta- morphosed: they mirror our own world but in a distorted way. Cognitive estrangement is produced by a novum—a puzzling innovation—in every sf story. This novum distances (or estranges) readers from some received “truth”—for example, the idea that human nature is essentially unchanging is called into question in Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million” (1966). To Suvin, sf ’s “worlds of if ” offer estranged versions of the author’s/reader’s here and now; nonetheless, the future in sf is logically (cognitively) tied to the present.

xvi INtroductIoN

A number of critics have discussed what they term the reading protocols of sf—the approaches required for understanding the genre. Sf readers know that much of the story will not be clear at the beginning; they live with un- certainty through much, if not all, of a story such as Tenn’s “The Liberation of Earth” (1953). Some stories might introduce a single novum (for example, the cloned siblings in Le Guin’s “Nine Lives” [1969]), while others might teem with new things. As is fitting, the genre that addresses innovation and change can, in its own storytelling protocols, shift dramatically in response to social changes or new scientific ideas. Two important reading protocols identified for sf are Marc Angenot’s notion of the absent paradigm and Samuel R. Delany’s analysis of sf ’s sub- junctivity. The absent paradigm refers to those semantic blanks, noted above, that challenge the reader’s imagination to construct a new and dif- ferent world out of scattered hints and clues. Sf ’s stories strand readers in an unfamiliar place or time, forcing them to supply contextual meaning for the bits of alien information with which they are bombarded. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), for instance, is set in a post-apocalypse Man- hattan, but the nature and dimensions of the cataclysm must be puzzled out from the narrator’s offhand comments. The estranging effects of sf ’s absent paradigms are experienced in concentrated form in the short story, which can pack a density of futuristic or otherworldly implication into its brief space. The result can be dizzying, as in Ellison’s “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), with its pyrotechnic style and array of new words—swizzleskid, minee, Smash-O, fallaron—that draw readers into a place and time ruled by a lethally efficient future form of capitalism. Sf ’s subjunctivity further complicates the reader’s task. According to Delany, the language of an sf text works differently from language in real- istic—or, to use his term, “mundane”—fiction. In his famous example, the sentence “Her world exploded” can, in a mundane story, only be a metaphor for a woman’s emotional state, whereas in science fiction it could be a literal description of the destruction of her home planet. This linguistic openness or indeterminacy means that sf always operates at a sentence-by-sentence level in the subjunctive mode: sf stories narrate not what can realistically happen at the present moment, but what might happen in future times and alien places—in sf ’s “worlds of if.” Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) displays subjunctivity in its very title, which sug- gests that what we take to be a settled referent (the processes of memory) can mean something quite different in an sf context—in this case because technological advances in Dick’s future world allow for the implantation, at a price, of artificial memories. Readers must accept that the referential

INtroductIoN xvii

functions of language in science fiction are usually, whether subtly or signifi- cantly, estranged. Although these terms—cognitive estrangement, absent paradigm, sub- junctivity—may seem forbidding, they are fully compatible with an intu- itive insight long held by fans: the genre conveys a sense of wonder. This experience—of the exhilarating, mind-expanding power of the best sf—is brought about by the same processes that such critics as Suvin, Angenot, and Delany have analyzed. As readers negotiate the distance between the estranged world of an sf story and their own reality—a process in which they must reconstruct an absent paradigm and decode the text’s subjunctivity— they come to grasp, and be dazzled by, the extraordinary span of time and space; they see the possibility of almost unthinkable social and technological changes. For those who are open to it, the genre’s unique demands provide rare delights, including a sense of awe at the vast transformative power of futurity.

Different Viewpoints, Different Worlds

Writers in the genre offer widely disparate visions of the world. Readers of sf therefore are invited to analyze divergent ideas as well as literary styles. Scholars, too, represent any number of critical and theoretical approaches, and the editors of SfS are no exception. We have designed this anthology to demonstrate the diversity of the genre and to encourage a broad range of thinking about it. While no anthology can incorporate all of sf ’s richness, we sought in choosing stories to acknowledge as much as possible the genre’s stylistic variety and its many topical interests. For several years, we read, dis- cussed, compared, analyzed, argued, compromised, conducted straw polls, and voted on dozens of potential stories. We asked members of the Science Fiction Research Association and the International Association for the Fan- tastic in the Arts for suggestions on what would be the ideal balance be- tween older and newer tales and what pedagogical materials would be most useful. Finally, we arrived at these fifty-two selections, printed in historical sequence, beginning with a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1844 and ending with a 2008 story by Ted Chiang. We hope that The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction will serve as a bridge not only to an appreciation of some of the best works of sf ever written but also to the world of sf scholarship. With that in mind, and using the many suggestions we received from our colleagues, we have included ancillary material: a critical bibliography that lists many of the most impor- tant studies in the field and an online “Teacher’s Guide”—available on the Wesleyan University Press website at

xviii INtroductIoN

sfanthologyguide>—that includes discussion questions for each story, avail- able Internet resources, illustrations such as magazine and book covers, sug- gestions for course design, and advice on student research. This anthology was created for the purpose of teaching sf at many levels, as well as for casual and critical reading by both neophytes and experts. Science fiction is complex and provocative as well as stimulating and enjoyable, rewarding thoughtful study in and out of the classroom. Welcome to the words and worlds of science fiction.

The Wesleyan anthology of

Science Fiction . . . .

1

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rappaccini’s Daughter . . . . { 1844 }

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and used his family’s history there most famously in his novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), which drew on his ancestor’s role as a judge in the infamous Salem witch trials. According to his biographer James R. Mellow, Hawthorne borrowed from his own life for “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Like Giovanni, Hawthorne was a handsome and intense man prone to romantic entanglements who had an aff air with the metaphorically poisonous Mary Silsbee. Beatrice’s personality, however, seems closer to the character of the woman he eventually married, the secluded and in- telligent Sophia Peabody. Peabody suff ered from health problems that may have stemmed from her physician father’s overuse of drugs in treating her ailments as a child, so Dr. Peabody may have served as a model for Doctor Rappaccini. Hawthorne was part of the American Romantic movement of the mid- nineteenth century and was friends with other major fi gures in American Roman- ticism such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville. In the spirit of the times, he did not draw distinctions between art and science, using both in ways that would now be considered science fi ctional, not only in the story collected here but also in other stories such as “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” (1837), “The Birth-mark” (1843), and “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844). As Hawthorne himself put it in “The Custom-House,” his introduction to The Scarlet Letter, his literary concern was with “a neutral territory . . . where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.” In this neutral territory, Hawthorne allows science to be imbued with evocative metaphorical signifi cance and off ers plausible explanations from the world of the Actual to undermine seemingly im- possible events from the world of the Imaginary. Just as in The Scarlet Letter every miraculous event has a rational explanation and Dr. Chillingworth and Hester Prynne’s secret powers are explained in terms of medicine, so in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” selective breeding and the powers of suggestion can explain many of the story’s seemingly fantastic elements. Hawthorne’s description of the neutral territory in which he works is very much like that of the English Romantic and

2 NathaNIel haWthorNe

Gothic writer of Frankenstein (1818), Mary Shelley, sometimes considered a found- ing mother of science fiction, who herself made a point of eschewing the super- natural. Much of what makes Hawthorne’s story so powerful, so psychologically and emotionally convincing, and so eerie, is its use of ambiguous metaphor and sym- bol to layer the tale with multiple meanings. This is a technique that later writers will continue to use to good effect, for example Gene Wolfe in “Useful Phrases” (1992).

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 ex- tinct. 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 heartbreak 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. “Holy Virgin, Signor!” cried old dame Lisabetta, who, won by the youth’s remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a habitable air, “what a sigh was that to come out of a young man’s heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as bright sunshine as you have left in Naples.” Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden beneath the window, and expended its fostering influences on a variety of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care. “Does this garden belong to the house?” asked Giovanni. “Heaven forbid, Signor!—unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs than any that grow there now,” answered old Lisabetta. “No; that garden is culti- vated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous Doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is said he distils

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these plants into medicines that are as potent as a charm. Oftentimes you may see the Signor Doctor at work, and perchance the Signora his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers that grow in the garden.” The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the cham- ber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints, took her departure. Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the gar- den beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one of those botanic gardens, which were of earlier date in Padua than elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once have been the pleasure- place of an opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the center, sculptured with rare art, but so woefully shattered that it was im- possible to trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man’s win- dow, and made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly, and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one century embodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the luster and richness of a gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them. Some were placed in urns, rich with old carving, and others in com- mon garden-pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground, or climbed on high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study. While Giovanni stood at the window, he heard a rustling behind a screen of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden. His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly looking man, dressed in a scholar’s garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, a thin gray beard, and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultiva-

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tion, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart. Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape, and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of the deep intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between himself and these vegetable exis- tences. On the contrary, he avoided their actual touch, or the direct inhaling of their odors, with a caution that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man’s demeanor was that of one walking among malignant influ- ences, such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one moment of license, would wreak upon him some ter- rible fatality. It was strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what his own hands caused to grow—was he the Adam? The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a deadlier malice. But finding his task still too dangerous, he drew back, removed the mask, and called loudly, but in the infirm voice of a person affected with inward disease: “Beatrice! Beatrice!” “Here am I, my father! What would you?” cried a rich and youthful voice from the window of the opposite house—a voice as rich as a tropical sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable. “Are you in the gar- den?” “Yes, Beatrice,” answered the gardener, “and I need your help.” Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and com-

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pressed, as it were, and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni’s fancy must have grown morbid while he looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they—more beautiful than the richest of them—but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden path, it was observable that she handled and in- haled the odor of several of the plants which her father had most sedulously avoided. “Here, Beatrice,” said the latter, “see how many needful offices require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am, my life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be consigned to your sole charge.” “And gladly will I undertake it,” cried again the rich tones of the young lady, as she bent towards the magnificent plant and opened her arms as if to embrace it. “Yes, my sister, my splendor, it shall be Beatrice’s task to nurse and serve thee; and thou shalt reward her with thy kisses and perfumed breath, which to her is as the breath of life.” Then, with all the tenderness in her manner that was so strikingly ex- pressed in her words, she busied herself with such attentions as the plant seemed to require; and Giovanni, at his lofty window, rubbed his eyes, and almost doubted whether it were a girl tending her favorite flower, or one sis- ter performing the duties of affection to another. The scene soon terminated. Whether Dr. Rappaccini had finished his labors in the garden, or that his watchful eye had caught the stranger’s face, he now took his daughter’s arm and retired. Night was already closing in; oppressive exhalations seemed to proceed from the plants, and steal upward past the open window; and Gio- vanni, closing the lattice, went to his couch, and dreamed of a rich flower and beautiful girl. Flower and maiden were different, and yet the same, and fraught with some strange peril in either shape. But there is an influence in the light of morning that tends to rectify what- ever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun’s decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. Giovanni’s first movement on starting from sleep, was to throw open the window and gaze down into the garden which his dreams had made so fertile of mysteries. He was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be, in the first rays of the sun which gilded the dew-drops that hung upon leaf and blossom, and, while giving a brighter beauty to each rare flower, brought everything within the limits of ordinary experience. The young man rejoiced, that, in the heart

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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 thoughtworn Dr. 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. Giovanni, conceiving that men of science, inhabitants of the same city, must needs be on familiar terms with one another, took an opportunity to mention the name of Dr. Rappaccini. But the Professor did not respond with so much cordiality as he had antici- pated. “Ill would it become a teacher of the divine art of medicine,” said Profes- sor Pietro Baglioni, in answer to a question of Giovanni, “to withhold due and well-considered praise of a physician so eminently skilled as Rappac- cini. But, on the other hand, I should answer it but scantily to my conscience were I to permit a worthy youth like yourself, Signor Giovanni, the son of an ancient friend, to imbibe erroneous ideas respecting a man who might hereafter chance to hold your life and death in his hands. The truth is, our worshipful Doctor Rappaccini has as much science as any member of the faculty—with perhaps one single exception—in Padua, or all Italy; but there are certain grave objections to his professional character.” “And what are they?” asked the young man. “Has my friend Giovanni any disease of body or heart, that he is so in- quisitive about physicians?” said the Professor, with a smile. “But as for Rap- paccini, it is said of him—and I, who know the man well, can answer for its truth—that he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.” “Methinks he is an awful man, indeed,” remarked Guasconti, mentally recalling the cold and purely intellectual aspect of Rappaccini. “And yet,

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worshipful Professor, is it not a noble spirit? Are there many men capable of so spiritual a love of science?” “God forbid,” answered the Professor, somewhat testily; “at least, unless they take sounder views of the healing art than those adopted by Rappac- cini. It is his theory that all medicinal virtues are comprised within those substances which we term vegetable poisons. These he cultivates with his own hands, and is said even to have produced new varieties of poison, more horribly deleterious than Nature, without the assistance of this learned per- son, would ever have plagued the world withal. That the Signor Doctor does less mischief than might be expected, with such dangerous substances, is undeniable. Now and then, it must be owned, he has effected, or seemed to effect, a marvellous cure; but, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive little credit for such instances of success—they being prob- ably the work of chance—but should be held strictly accountable for his fail- ures, which may justly be considered his own work.” The youth might have taken Baglioni’s opinions with many grains of allowance had he known that there was a professional warfare of long con- tinuance between him and Doctor Rappaccini, in which the latter was gen- erally thought to have gained the advantage. If the reader be inclined to judge for himself, we refer him to certain black-letter tracts on both sides, preserved in the medical department of the University of Padua. “I know not, most learned Professor,” returned Giovanni, after musing on what had been said of Rappaccini’s exclusive zeal for science—“I know not how dearly this physician may love his art; but surely there is one object more dear to him. He has a daughter.” “Aha!” cried the Professor with a laugh. “So now our friend Giovanni’s secret is out. You have heard of this daughter, whom all the young men in Padua are wild about, though not half a dozen have ever had the good hap to see her face. I know little of the Signora Beatrice save that Rappaccini is said to have instructed her deeply in his science, and that, young and beautiful as fame reports her, she is already qualified to fill a professor’s chair. Perchance her father destines her for mine! Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or listening to. So now, Signor Giovanni, drink off your glass of lachryma.” Guasconti returned to his lodgings somewhat heated with the wine he had quaffed, and which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in reference to Doctor Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice. On his way, hap- pening to pass by a florist’s, he bought a fresh bouquet of flowers. Ascending to his chamber, he seated himself near the window, but within the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, so that he could look down

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into the garden with little risk of being discovered. All beneath his eye was a solitude. The strange plants were basking in the sunshine, and now and then nodding gently to one another, as if in acknowledgment of sympathy and kindred. In the midst, by the shattered fountain, grew the magnificent shrub, with its purple gems clustering all over it; they glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths of the pool, which thus seemed to overflow with colored radiance from the rich reflection that was steeped in it. At first, as we have said, the garden was a solitude. Soon, however—as Giovanni had half hoped, half feared, would be the case—a figure appeared beneath the antique sculptured portal, and came down between the rows of plants, inhaling their various perfumes, as if she were one of those beings of old classic fable that lived upon sweet odors. On again beholding Beatrice, the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it; so brilliant, so vivid, was its character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, positively illumi- nated the more shadowy intervals of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and sweetness—qualities that had not entered into his idea of her character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he fail again to observe, or imagine, an analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gem-like flowers over the fountain—a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fan- tastic humor in heightening, both by the arrangement of her dress and the selection of its hues. Approaching the shrub, she threw open her arms, as with a passionate ardor, and drew its branches into an intimate embrace—so intimate that her features were hidden in its leafy bosom and her glistening ringlets all intermingled with the flowers. “Give me thy breath, my sister,” exclaimed Beatrice; “for I am faint with common air. And give me this flower of thine, which I separate with gentlest fingers from the stem, and place it close beside my heart.” With these words, the beautiful daughter of Rappaccini plucked one of the richest blossoms of the shrub, and was about to fasten it in her bosom. But now, unless Giovanni’s draughts of wine had bewildered his senses, a singular incident occurred. A small orange colored reptile, of the lizard or chameleon species, chanced to be creeping along the path, just at the feet of Beatrice. It appeared to Giovanni—but, at the distance from which he gazed, he could scarcely have seen anything so minute—it appeared to him, however, that a drop or two of moisture from the broken stem of the flower descended upon the lizard’s head. For an instant, the reptile contorted itself

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violently, and then lay motionless in the sunshine. Beatrice observed this re- markable phenomenon, and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise; nor did she therefore hesitate to arrange the fatal flower in her bosom. There it blushed, and almost glimmered with the dazzling effect of a precious stone, adding to her dress and aspect the one appropriate charm which nothing else in the world could have supplied. But Giovanni, out of the shadow of his window, bent forward and shrank back, and murmured and trembled. “Am I awake? Have I my senses?” said he to himself. “What is this being? Beautiful shall I call her, or inexpressibly terrible?” Beatrice now strayed carelessly through the garden, approaching closer beneath Giovanni’s window, so that he was compelled to thrust his head quite out of its concealment in order to gratify the intense and painful curi- osity which she excited. At this moment there came a beautiful insect over the garden wall; it had, perhaps, wandered through the city and found no flowers or verdure among those antique haunts of men until the heavy per- fumes of Doctor Rappaccini’s shrubs had lured it from afar. Without alight- ing on the flowers, this winged brightness seemed to be attracted by Beatrice, and lingered in the air and fluttered about her head. Now, here it could not be but that Giovanni Guasconti’s eyes deceived him. Be that as it might, he fancied that, while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it grew faint and fell at her feet; its bright wings shivered; it was dead—from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the atmosphere of her breath. Again Beatrice crossed herself and sighed heavily as she bent over the dead insect. An impulsive movement of Giovanni drew her eyes to the window. There she beheld the beautiful head of the young man—rather a Grecian than an Italian head, with fair, regular features, and a glistening of gold among his ringlets—gazing down upon her like a being that hovered in mid air. Scarcely knowing what he did, Giovanni threw down the bouquet which he had hitherto held in his hand. “Signora,” said he, “there are pure and healthful flowers. Wear them for the sake of Giovanni Guasconti!” “Thanks, Signor,” replied Beatrice, with her rich voice, that came forth as it were like a gush of music; and with a mirthful expression half childish and half woman-like. “I accept your gift, and would fain recompense it with this precious purple flower; but if I toss it into the air, it will not reach you. So Signor Guasconti must even content himself with my thanks.” She lifted the bouquet from the ground, and then, as if inwardly ashamed at having stepped aside from her maidenly reserve to respond to a stranger’s greeting, passed swiftly homeward through the garden. But, few as the mo-

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ments were, it seemed to Giovanni when she was on the point of vanish- ing beneath the sculptured portal, that his beautiful bouquet was already beginning to wither in her grasp. It was an idle thought; there could be no possibility of distinguishing a faded flower from a fresh one at so great a distance. For many days after this incident the young man avoided the window that looked into Doctor Rappaccini’s garden, as if something ugly and monstrous would have blasted his eyesight had he been betrayed into a glance. He felt conscious of having put himself, to a certain extent, within the influence of an unintelligible power by the communication which he had opened with Beatrice. The wisest course would have been, if his heart were in any real danger, to quit his lodgings and Padua itself at once; the next wiser, to have accustomed himself, as far as possible, to the familiar and daylight view of Beatrice—thus bringing her rigidly and systematically within the limits of ordinary experience. Least of all, while avoiding her sight, ought Giovanni have remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and pos- sibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot continually in producing. Guas- conti had not a deep heart—or, at all events, its depths were not sounded now; but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern temperament, which rose every instant to a higher fever-pitch. Whether or no Beatrice possessed those terrible attributes, that fatal breath, the affinity with those so beautiful and deadly flowers which were indicated by what Giovanni had witnessed, she had at least instilled a fierce and subtle poison into his system. It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did he know what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately van- quishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm was seized by a portly per- sonage, who had turned back on recognizing the young man and expended much breath in overtaking him.

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“Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!” cried he. “Have you forgotten me? That might well be the case, if I were as much altered as yourself.” It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first meet- ing, from a doubt that the Professor’s sagacity would look too deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a man in a dream. “Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now let me pass!” “Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti,” said the Professor, smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest glance. “What! did I grow up side by side with your father? and shall his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand still, Signor Giovanni; for we must have a word or two before we part.” “Speedily, then, most worshipful Professor, speedily!” said Giovanni, with feverish impatience. “Does not your worship see that I am in haste?” Now, while he was speaking, there came a man in black along the street, stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so pervaded with an expression of piercing and active intellect that an observer might easily have overlooked the merely physical attributes and have seen only this wonder- ful energy. As he passed, this person exchanged a cold and distant saluta- tion with Baglioni, but fixed his eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever was within him worthy of notice. Neverthe- less, there was a peculiar quietness in the look, as if taking merely a specu- lative, not a human, interest in the young man. “It is Doctor Rappaccini!” whispered the Professor when the stranger had passed. “Has he ever seen your face before?” “Not that I know,” answered Giovanni, starting at the name. “He has seen you! He must have seen you!” said Baglioni, hastily. “For some purpose or other, this man of science is making a study of you. I know that look of his! It is the same that coldly illuminates his face as he bends over a bird, a mouse, or a butterfly, which, in pursuance of some experiment, he has killed by the perfume of a flower; a look as deep as Nature itself, but without Nature’s warmth of love. Signor Giovanni, I will stake my life upon it, you are the subject of one of Rappaccini’s experiments!” “Will you make a fool of me?” cried Giovanni, passionately. “That, Signor Professor, were an untoward experiment.” “Patience, patience!” replied the imperturbable Professor. “I tell thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappaccini has a scientific interest in thee. Thou hast

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fallen into fearful hands! And the Signora Beatrice? What part does she act in this mystery?” But Guasconti, finding Baglioni’s pertinacity intolerable, here broke away, and was gone before the Professor could again seize his arm. He looked after the young man intently, and shook his head. “This must not be,” said Baglioni to himself. “The youth is the son of my old friend, and shall not come to any harm from which the arcana of medical science can preserve him. Besides, it is too insufferable an impertinence in Rappaccini, thus to snatch the lad out of my own hands, as I may say, and make use of him for his infernal experiments. This daughter of his! It shall be looked to. Perchance, most learned Rappaccini, I may foil you where you little dream of it!” Meanwhile, Giovanni had pursued a circuitous route, and at length found himself at the door of his lodgings. As he crossed the threshold he was met by old Lisabetta, who smirked and smiled, and was evidently desirous to attract his attention; vainly, however, as the ebullition of his feelings had momentarily subsided into a cold and dull vacuity. He turned his eyes full upon the withered face that was puckering itself into a smile, but seemed to behold it not. The old dame, therefore, laid her grasp upon his cloak. “Signor! Signor!” whispered she, still with a smile over the whole breadth of her visage, so that it looked not unlike a grotesque carving in wood, dark- ened by centuries. “Listen, Signor! There is a private entrance into the gar- den!” “What do you say?” exclaimed Giovanni, turning quickly about, as if an inanimate thing should start into feverish life. “A private entrance into Doc- tor Rappaccini’s garden?” “Hush! hush! not so loud!” whispered Lisabetta, putting her hand over his mouth. “Yes; into the worshipful doctor’s garden, where you may see all his fine shrubbery. Many a young man in Padua would give gold to be ad- mitted among those flowers.” Giovanni put a piece of gold into her hand. “Show me the way,” said he. A surmise, probably excited by his conversation with Baglioni, crossed his mind, that this interposition of old Lisabetta might perchance be connected with the intrigue, whatever were its nature, in which the Professor seemed to suppose that Doctor Rappaccini was involving him. But such a suspicion, though it disturbed Giovanni, was inadequate to restrain him. The instant that he was aware of the possibility of approaching Beatrice, it seemed an absolute necessity of his existence to do so. It mattered not whether she were angel or demon; he was irrevocably within her sphere, and must obey

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the law that whirled him onward, in ever lessening circles, towards a result which he did not attempt to foreshadow. And yet, strange to say, there came across him a sudden doubt whether this intense interest on his part were not delusory; whether it were really of so deep and positive a nature as to justify him in now thrusting himself into an incalculable position; whether it were not merely the fantasy of a young man’s brain, only slightly or not at all connected with his heart! He paused, hesitated, turned half about, but again went on. His withered guide led him along several obscure passages, and finally undid a door, through which, as it was opened, there came the sight and sound of rus- tling leaves, with the broken sunshine glimmering among them. Giovanni stepped forth, and, forcing himself through the entanglement of a shrub that wreathed its tendrils over the hidden entrance, he stood beneath his own window, in the open area of Doctor Rappaccini’s garden. How often is it the case, that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance. So was it now with Giovanni. Day after day his pulses had throbbed with feverish blood at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice, and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden, basking in the Oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching from her full gaze the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his own existence. But now there was a singular and untimely equanimity within his breast. He threw a glance around the garden to discover if Beatrice or her father were present, and, perceiving that he was alone, began a critical observation of the plants. The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural. There was hardly an indi- vidual shrub which a wanderer, straying by himself through a forest, would not have been startled to find growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out of the thicket. Several also would have shocked a delicate instinct by an appearance of artificialness indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery, of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God’s making, but the monstrous off- spring of man’s depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably the result of experiment, which in one or two cases had succeeded in mingling plants individually lovely into a compound possess-

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ing the questionable and ominous character that distinguished the whole growth of the garden. In fine, Giovanni recognized but two or three plants in the collection, and those of a kind that he well knew to be poisonous. While busy with these contemplations, he heard the rustling of a silken gar- ment, and, turning, beheld Beatrice emerging from beneath the sculptured portal. Giovanni had not considered with himself what should be his deport- ment; whether he should apologize for his intrusion into the garden, or assume that he was there with the privity at least, if not by the desire, of Doctor Rappaccini or his daughter; but Beatrice’s manner placed him at his ease, though leaving him still in doubt by what agency he had gained admittance. She came lightly along the path and met him near the broken fountain. There was surprise in her face, but brightened by a simple and kind expression of pleasure. “You are a connoisseur in flowers, Signor,” said Beatrice, with a smile, alluding to the bouquet which he had flung her from the window. “It is no marvel, therefore, if the sight of my father’s rare collection has tempted you to take a nearer view. If he were here, he could tell you many strange and interesting facts as to the nature and habits of these shrubs; for he has spent a lifetime in such studies, and this garden is his world.” “And yourself, lady,” observed Giovanni, “if fame says true—you likewise are deeply skilled in the virtues indicated by these rich blossoms and these spicy perfumes. Would you deign to be my instructress, I should prove an apter scholar than under Signor Rappaccini himself.” “Are there such idle rumors?” asked Beatrice, with the music of a pleasant laugh. “Do people say that I am skilled in my father’s science of plants? What a jest is there! No; though I have grown up among these flowers, I know no more of them than their hues and perfume; and sometimes, methinks I would fain rid myself of even that small knowledge. There are many flowers here, and those not the least brilliant, that shock and offend me when they meet my eye. But, pray, Signor, do not believe these stories about my science. Believe nothing of me save what you see with your own eyes.” “And must I believe all that I have seen with my own eyes?” asked Gio- vanni pointedly, while the recollection of former scenes made him shrink. “No, Signora, you demand too little of me. Bid me believe nothing save what comes from your own lips.” It would appear that Beatrice understood him. There came a deep flush to her cheek; but she looked full into Giovanni’s eyes, and responded to his gaze of uneasy suspicion with a queenlike haughtiness. “I do so bid you, Signor,” she replied. “Forget whatever you may have fan-

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cied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be false in its essence. But the words of Beatrice Rappaccini’s lips are true from the heart outward. Those you may believe.” A fervor glowed in her whole aspect and beamed upon Giovanni’s con- sciousness like the light of truth itself. But while she spoke there was a fra- grance in the atmosphere around her, rich and delightful, though evanes- cent, yet which the young man, from an indefinable reluctance, scarcely dared to draw into his lungs. It might be the odor of the flowers. Could it be Beatrice’s breath which thus embalmed her words with a strange richness, as if by steeping them in her heart? A faintness passed like a shadow over Giovanni and flitted away; he seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl’s eyes into her transparent soul, and felt no more doubt or fear. The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice’s manner vanished; she became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her communion with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely island might have felt conversing with a voyager from the civilized world. Evidently her experience of life had been confined within the limits of that garden. She talked now about matters as simple as the daylight or summer clouds, and now asked questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni’s distant home, his friends, his mother, and his sisters—questions indicating such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching its first glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the reflections of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom. There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and fantasies of a gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and rubies sparkled upward among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon there gleamed across the young man’s mind a sense of wonder that he should be walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon his imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in whom he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful attributes—that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a brother, and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such reflections were only momentary; the effect of her character was too real not to make itself familiar at once. In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and now, after many turns among its avenues, were come to the shattered fountain, beside which grew the magnificent shrub, with its treasury of glowing blos- soms. A fragrance was diffused from it which Giovanni recognized as identi- cal with that which he had attributed to Beatrice’s breath, but incomparably more powerful. As her eyes fell upon it, Giovanni beheld her press her hand to her bosom as if her heart were throbbing suddenly and painfully.

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“For the first time in my life,” murmured she, addressing the shrub, “I had forgotten thee!” “I remember, Signora,” said Giovanni, “that you once promised to reward me with one of these living gems for the bouquet which I had the happy boldness to fling to your feet. Permit me now to pluck it as a memorial of this interview.” He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand. But Beatrice darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his fibers. “Touch it not!” exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. “Not for thy life! It is fatal!” Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the sculp- tured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld the emaci- ated figure and pale intelligence of Doctor Rappaccini, who had been watch- ing the scene, he knew not how long, within the shadow of the entrance. No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery that had been gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her, and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine qualities; she was worthi- est to be worshipped; she was capable, surely, on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle sophistry of passion transmuted into a golden crown of enchantment, rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more unique. 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 he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Doctor Rappaccini’s garden, whither Giovanni’s 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. O, how stubbornly does love—or even that cunning semblance of love

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which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into the heart—how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a handkerchief about his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him, and soon forgot his pain in a revery of Beatrice. After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni’s daily life, but the whole space in which he might be said to live; for the anticipation and memory of that ecstatic hour made up the remainder. Nor was it otherwise with the daughter of Rappac- cini. She watched for the youth’s appearance, and flew to his side with confi- dence as unreserved as if they had been playmates from early infancy—as if they were such playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and reverberate throughout his heart: “Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest thou? Come down!” And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous flowers. But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in Beatrice’s demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea of infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to be whis- pered by the way; they had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment—so marked was the physi- cal barrier between them—had never been waved against him by a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a spoken word was requisite to re- pel him. At such times he was startled at the horrible suspicions that rose, monsterlike, out of the caverns of his heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint as the morning mist, his doubts alone had substance. But, when Beatrice’s face brightened again after the momentary shadow, she was transformed at once from the mysterious, questionable being whom he had watched with so much awe and horror; she was now the beautiful and unsophisticated girl whom he felt that his spirit knew with a certainty be- yond all other knowledge. A considerable time had now passed since Giovanni’s last meeting with

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Baglioni. One morning, however, he was disagreeably surprised by a visit from the Professor, whom he had scarcely thought of for whole weeks, and would willingly have forgotten still longer. Given up as he had long been to a pervading excitement, he could tolerate no companions except upon condition of their perfect sympathy with his present state of feeling. Such sympathy was not to be expected from Professor Baglioni. The visitor chatted carelessly for a few moments about the gossip of the city and the University, and then took up another topic. “I have been reading an old classic author lately,” said he, “and met with a story that strangely interested me. Possibly you may remember it. It is of an Indian prince, who sent a beautiful woman as a present to Alexander the Great. She was as lovely as the dawn and gorgeous as the sunset; but what especially distinguished her was a certain rich perfume in her breath— richer than a garden of Persian roses. Alexander, as was natural to a youth- ful conqueror, fell in love at first sight with this magnificent stranger; but a certain sage physician, happening to be present, discovered a terrible secret in regard to her.” “And what was that?” asked Giovanni, turning his eyes downward to avoid those of the Professor. “That this lovely woman,” continued Baglioni, with emphasis, “had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was so imbued with them that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison—her em- brace death. Is not this a marvelous tale?” “A childish fable,” answered Giovanni, nervously starting from his chair. “I marvel how your worship finds time to read such nonsense among your graver studies.” “By the by,” said the Professor, looking uneasily about him, “what singu- lar 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 Pro- fessor 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.” “Ay; but my sober imagination does not often play such tricks,” said Bagli- oni; “and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would be that of some vile

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apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are likely enough to be imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as I have heard, tinctures his medica- ments with odors richer than those of Araby. Doubtless, likewise, the fair and learned Signora Beatrice would minister to her patients with draughts as sweet as a maiden’s breath; but woe to him that sips them!” Giovanni’s face evinced many contending emotions. The tone in which the Professor alluded to the pure and lovely daughter of Rappaccini was a torture to his soul; and yet, the intimation of a view of her character, oppo- site to his own, gave instantaneous distinctness to a thousand dim suspi- cions, which now grinned at him like so many demons. But he strove hard to quell them and to respond to Baglioni with a true lover’s perfect faith. “Signor Professor,” said he, “you were my father’s friend; perchance, too, it is your purpose to act a friendly part towards his son. I would fain feel nothing towards you save respect and deference. But I pray you to observe, Signor, that there is one subject on which we must not speak. You know not the Signora Beatrice. You cannot, therefore, estimate the wrong—the blas- phemy, I may even say—that is offered to her character by a light or injurious word.” “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! Rappac- cini, with what he calls the interest of science before his eyes, will hesitate at nothing.” “It is a dream!” muttered Giovanni to himself; “surely it is a dream!” “But,” resumed the Professor, “be of good cheer, son of my friend! It is not yet too late for the rescue. Possibly, we may even succeed in bringing back this miserable child within the limits of ordinary nature, from which her father’s madness has estranged her. Behold this little silver vase! It was wrought by the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy

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to be a love gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, and hopefully await the result.” Baglioni laid a small, exquisitely wrought silver phial on the table and withdrew, leaving what he had said to produce its effect upon the young man’s mind. “We will thwart Rappaccini yet!” thought he, chuckling to himself, as he descended the stairs. “But, let us confess the truth of him, he is a wonderful man—a wonderful man indeed! A vile empiric, however, in his practice, and therefore not to be tolerated by those who respect the good old rules of the medical profession!” Throughout Giovanni’s whole acquaintance with Beatrice, he had occa- sionally, as we have said, been haunted by dark surmises as to her charac- ter; yet so thoroughly had she made herself felt by him as a simple, natural, most affectionate, and guileless creature, that the image now held up by Professor Baglioni looked as strange and incredible as if it were not in accor- dance with his own original conception. True, there were ugly recollections connected with his first glimpses of the beautiful girl; he could not quite forget the bouquet that withered in her grasp, and the insect that perished amid the sunny air, by no ostensible agency save the fragrance of her breath. These incidents, however, dissolving in the pure light of her character, had no longer the efficacy of facts, but were acknowledged as mistaken fanta- sies, by whatever testimony of the senses they might appear to be substan- tiated. There is something truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger. On such better evidence had Giovanni founded his confidence in Beatrice, though rather by the necessary force of her high attributes than by any deep and generous faith on his part. But, now his spirit was incapable of sustaining itself at the height to which the early enthusiasm of passion had exalted it; he fell down, grovelling among earthly doubts, and defiled therewith the pure whiteness of Beatrice’s image. Not that he gave her up; he did but distrust. He resolved to institute some decisive test that should satisfy him, once for all, whether there were those dreadful peculiarities in her physical nature which could not be supposed to exist without some corresponding monstrosity of soul. His eyes, gazing down afar, might have deceived him as to the lizard, the insect, and the flowers. But if he could witness, at the distance of a few paces, the sudden blight of one fresh and healthful flower in Beatrice’s hand, there would be

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room for no further question. With this idea he hastened to the florist’s and purchased a bouquet that was still gemmed with the morning dewdrops. It was now the customary hour of his daily interview with Beatrice. Before descending into the garden, Giovanni failed not to look at his figure in the mirror—a vanity to be expected in a beautiful young man, yet, as displaying itself at that troubled and feverish moment, the token of a certain shallow- ness of feeling and insincerity of character. He did gaze, however, and said to himself that his features had never before possessed so rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity, nor his cheeks so warm a hue of superabundant life. “At least,” thought he, “her poison has not yet insinuated itself into my system. I am no flower to perish in her grasp!” With that thought he turned his eyes on the bouquet, which he had never once laid aside from his hand. A thrill of indefinable horror shot through his frame on perceiving that those dewy flowers were already beginning to droop; they wore the aspect of things that had been fresh and lovely yester- day. Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there as at the likeness of something fright- ful. He remembered Baglioni’s remark about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It must have been the poison in his breath! Then he shuddered—shuddered at himself. Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a spider that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique cornice of the apartment, crossing and re-crossing the artful system of interwoven lines—as vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an old ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long breath. The spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung dead across the window. “Accursed! Accursed!” muttered Giovanni, addressing himself. “Hast thou grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?” At that moment, a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden. “Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come down!” “Yes,” muttered Giovanni again. “She is the only being whom my breath may not slay! Would that it might!” He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a glance. But with her actual presence there came influences which had too

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real an existence to be at once shaken off; recollections of the delicate and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had been unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as he was of such high faith, still her presence had not utterly lost its magic. Giovanni’s rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen insensi- bility. Beatrice, with a quick spiritual sense, immediately felt that there was a gulf of blackness between them which neither he nor she could pass. They walked on together, sad and silent, and came thus to the marble fountain and to its pool of water on the ground, in the midst of which grew the shrub that bore gem-like blossoms. Giovanni was affrighted at the eager enjoy- ment—the appetite, as it were—with which he found himself inhaling the fragrance of the flowers. “Beatrice,” asked he abruptly, “whence came this shrub?” “My father created it,” answered she, with simplicity. “Created it! created it!” repeated Giovanni. “What mean you, Beatrice?” “He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature,” replied Beatrice; “and, at the hour when I first drew breath, this plant sprang from the soil, the offspring of his science, of his intellect, while I was but his earthly child. Approach it not!” continued she, observing with terror that Giovanni was drawing nearer to the shrub. “It has qualities that you little dream of. But I, dearest Giovanni—I grew up and blossomed with the plant, and was nourished with its breath. It was my sister, and I loved it with a human af- fection; for, alas!—hast thou not suspected it?—there was an awful doom.” Here Giovanni frowned so darkly upon her that Beatrice paused and trembled. But her faith in his tenderness reassured her, and made her blush that she had doubted for an instant. “There was an awful doom,” she continued, “the effect of my father’s fatal love of science, which estranged me from all society of my kind. Until Heaven sent thee, dearest Giovanni, oh! how lonely was thy poor Beatrice!” “Was it a hard doom?” asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her. “Only of late have I known how hard it was,” answered she, tenderly. “Oh! yes; but my heart was torpid, and therefore quiet.” Giovanni’s rage broke forth from his sullen gloom like a lightning flash out of a dark cloud.

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“Accursed one!” cried he, with venomous scorn and anger. “And finding thy solitude wearisome, thou hast severed me likewise from all the warmth of life and enticed me into thy region of unspeakable horror!” “Giovanni!” exclaimed Beatrice, turning her large bright eyes upon his face. The force of his words had not found its way into her mind; she was merely thunderstruck. “Yes, poisonous thing!” repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion. “Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself—a world’s wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die!” “What has befallen me?” murmured Beatrice, with a low moan out of her heart. “Holy Virgin, pity me, a poor heart-broken child!” “Thou—dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pesti- lence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!” “Giovanni,” said Beatrice calmly, for her grief was beyond passion, “why dost thou join thyself with me thus in those terrible words? I, it is true, am the horrible thing thou namest me. But thou—what hast thou to do, save with one other shudder at my hideous misery, to go forth out of the garden and mingle with thy race, and forget that there ever crawled on earth such a monster as poor Beatrice?” “Dost thou pretend ignorance?” asked Giovanni, scowling upon her. “Be- hold! This power have I gained from the pure daughter of Rappaccini!” There was a swarm of summer insects flitting through the air in search of the food promised by the flower odors of the fatal garden. They circled round Giovanni’s head, and were evidently attracted towards him by the same in- fluence which had drawn them for an instant within the sphere of several of the shrubs. He sent forth a breath among them, and smiled bitterly at Beatrice, as at least a score of the insects fell dead upon the ground. “I see it! I see it!” shrieked Beatrice. “It is my father’s fatal science! No, no, Giovanni; it was not I! Never! never! I dreamed only to love thee and be with thee a little time, and so to let thee pass away, leaving but thine image in mine heart; for, Giovanni—believe it—though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God’s creature, and craves love as its daily food. But

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my father!—he has united us in this fearful sympathy. Yes; spurn me, tread upon me, kill me! Oh, what is death after such words as thine? But it was not I. Not for a world of bliss would I have done it.” Giovanni’s passion had exhausted itself in its outburst from his lips. There now came across him a sense, mournful, and not without tenderness, of the intimate and peculiar relationship between Beatrice and himself. They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life. Ought not, then, the desert of humanity around them to press this insulated pair closer together? If they should be cruel to one another, who was there to be kind to them? Besides, thought Giovanni, might there not still be a hope of his returning within the limits of ordinary nature, and leading Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the hand? O, weak, and selfish, and unworthy spirit, that could dream of an earthly union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep love had been so bitterly wronged as was Beatrice’s love by Giovanni’s blighting words! No, no; there could be no such hope. She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders of Time—she must bathe her hurts in some fount of paradise, and forget her grief in the light of immortality—and there be well. But Giovanni did not know it. “Dear Beatrice,” said he, approaching her, while she shrank away, as always at his approach, but now with a different impulse, “dearest Beatrice, our fate is not yet so desperate. Behold! There is a medicine, potent, as a wise physician has assured me, and almost divine in its efficacy. It is com- posed of ingredients the most opposite to those by which thy awful father has brought this calamity upon thee and me. It is distilled of blessed herbs. Shall we not quaff it together, and thus be purified from evil?” “Give it me!” said Beatrice, extending her hand to receive the little silver phial which Giovanni took from his bosom. She added, with a peculiar em- phasis: “I will drink; but do thou await the result.” She put Baglioni’s antidote to her lips; and, at the same moment, the figure of Rappaccini emerged from the portal and came slowly towards the marble fountain. As he drew near, the pale man of science seemed to gaze with a triumphant expression at the beautiful youth and maiden, as might an artist who should spend his life in achieving a picture or a group of statu- ary and finally be satisfied with his success. He paused; his bent form grew erect with conscious power; he spread out his hands over them in the atti- tude of a father imploring a blessing upon his children. But those were the same hands that had thrown poison into the stream of their lives! Giovanni

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trembled. Beatrice shuddered nervously, and pressed her hand upon her heart. “My daughter,” said Rappaccini, “thou art no longer lonely in the world. Pluck one of those precious gems from thy sister shrub and bid thy bride- groom wear it in his bosom. It will not harm him now. My science and the sympathy between thee and him have so wrought within his system that he now stands apart from common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and triumph, from ordinary women. Pass on, then, through the world, most dear to one another, and dreadful to all besides!” “My father,” said Beatrice, feebly—and still as she spoke she kept her hand upon her heart—“wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom upon thy child?” “Miserable!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvelous gifts, against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy? Misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath? Misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?” “I would fain have been loved, not feared,” murmured Beatrice, sinking down upon the ground. “But now it matters not. I am going, father, where the evil which thou hast striven to mingle with my being will pass away like a dream—like the fragrance of these poisonous flowers, which will no longer taint my breath among the flowers of Eden. Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart; but they, too, will fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?” To Beatrice—so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by Rappaccini’s skill—as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death. And thus the poor victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there, at the feet of her father and Giovanni. Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunderstricken man of science: “Rappaccini! Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?”

26

Jules Verne

from Journey to the Center of the Earth . . . . { 1864 }

Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a prolifi c French novelist often identifi ed as one of the “Fathers of Science Fiction,” the other being the British author H. G. Wells. During the nineteenth century Verne popularized an early brand of “hard” science fi ction in a series of novels called the Voyages extraordinaires (1863–1919), which depicted adventure-fi lled quests to the ends of the Earth and heroes making use of scientifi c knowledge and the latest technology to explore “known and unknown worlds” (the subtitle for this series). Expertly marketed by his publisher and men- tor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Verne’s novels became best sellers in France and around the world. Today he is ranked as the third most translated author of all time, ac- cording to UneSCO’s Index Translationum. Verne’s career began in the theater: he was a struggling playwright in Paris dur- ing the 1850s. He also penned articles on scientifi c topics and wrote occasional short stories such as “A Voyage in a Balloon” (1851) and “Master Zacharius” (1854) for French magazines. After the publication and success of his fi rst novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), about an aerial trek across the continent of Africa, Verne told his friends at the Paris Stock Market, where he had been working part-time: “My friends, I bid you adieu. . . . I’ve just written a novel in a new style. . . . If it succeeds, it will be a gold mine.” And a gold mine it was, not only for Verne and his publisher but also for world literature as his many Extraordinary Voyages helped give birth to a new literary genre. Verne’s next book manuscript, a futuristic but dystopian story called Paris in the Twentieth Century, was rejected by Hetzel as being too unrealistic and depressing. Verne promptly locked it in a safe and never looked at it again (it was discovered and published only in 1994). For his subsequent novels, Verne agreed to return to the successful narrative template of Five Weeks—that is, educational adventure tales heavily fl avored with scientifi c didacticism, mixed with equal parts of drama, humor, and “sense of wonder,” and seasoned with a large pinch of Saint-Simonian positivism. This narrative recipe proved to be enormously successful, and Verne was soon churning out one imaginative masterpiece after another. Some of his

from jourNey to the ceNter of the earth 27

more celebrated works include the subterranean thriller Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864); the first scientifically plausible manned lunar voyages in From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around the Moon (1870); the world’s most memo- rable oceanographic novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869), with its brooding Captain Nemo and his dream machine, the Nautilus; the prototypical circumnavigation novel in Around the World in Eighty Days (1873); the first example of a technological “robinsonade” in which castaways on a deserted island rebuild Western civilization in The Mysterious Island (1875); and a highly influential tale about early aeronautics and the conquest of the sky in Robur the Conqueror (aka The Clipper of the Clouds, 1886), among many others. Many of Verne’s later works seem to have a dramatically darker tone when compared to his earlier ones, exhibiting a steady shift away from a sunny techno- logical optimism toward an outlook that is more often pessimistic, cynical, and anti-science. The novel Topsy-Turvy (1889) ridicules the hubris of scientists who believe that they can modify the axis of the Earth; Propeller Island (1895) details the dire effects of colonial imperialism on Polynesian island cultures; Facing the Flag (1896) takes as its subject the dangers of science used for military purposes; and The Master of the World (1904), with its focus on the protagonist Robur’s descent into madness, vividly depicts the idea that advanced scientific knowledge can breed moral corruption. The following excerpt from Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (from the end of chapter 28 through chapter 31) portrays the moment when the three explorers, after weeks of perilous descent through a volcano’s dark tunnels (and young Axel’s near fatal tumble down a deep shaft), suddenly find themselves on the brightly lit shore of an underground sea. The sources for the story include the popular hollow-earth theories of the time as well as growing public interest in geology, paleontology, and the new ideas of Darwin. Narrated in the first per- son by the impressionable Axel, the novel’s discursive structure maintains a bal- ance between his uncle Lidenbrock’s detailed scientific exposés and Axel’s poetic rêveries. This delicate intertwining of fact with fantasy, mathematics with myth, and didacticism with daydreaming can be seen in all of Verne’s most successful Extraordinary Voyages.

Suddenly the ground beneath my feet gave way. I felt myself falling down a vertical shaft, ricocheting off the craggy outcroppings of what seemed to be a deep well. My head struck a sharp rock, and I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in semi-darkness, lying on thick blankets. My uncle was looking down at me intently, his eyes hoping to discover on my

28 juleS VerNe

face some sign of life. At my first sigh he took my hand, and when I opened my eyes he uttered a cry of joy. “He lives! he lives!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I am still alive,” I answered feebly. “My dear boy,” said my uncle, giving me a hug, “thank heaven you are saved.” I was deeply touched by the tenderness with which he uttered these words, and still more by the cares that accompanied them. It often required such extreme circumstances to bring out such displays of emotion in the professor. At this moment Hans approached us. He saw my hand in my uncle’s, and there was much joy in his eyes. “God dag,” he said. “Good day, Hans, good day,” I replied in a whisper. “And now, dear Uncle, please tell me where we are at the present time?” “Tomorrow, Axel, tomorrow. Right now you are still too weak. I have ban- daged your head with compresses which must not be disturbed. Sleep now, and tomorrow I will tell you everything.” “But at least tell me what time it is, and what day.” “It is eleven o’clock at night, Sunday, August 9th. And I forbid you from asking me any more questions until the 10th of this month!” In truth I was very weak, and my eyes were beginning to close involun- tarily. I needed a good night’s rest. So I let myself drift off to sleep, with the knowledge that my long solitude of several days was at an end. The next morning when I awoke, I looked around me. My bed, made up of all our travelling gear, was in a charming grotto that featured splendid sta- lactites and a floor of fine sand; it was bathed in a kind of twilight. No torch and no lamp was lighted, yet some mysterious gleams of light were filtering in through a narrow opening in the wall. I also heard a vague and indistinct noise, something like the murmuring of waves breaking upon a shore, and at times a whistling of wind. I wondered whether I was fully awake, if I were dreaming. Or whether my brain, injured by my fall, was perhaps registering purely imaginary noises. Yet neither my eyes nor my ears could be so completely mistaken. “It is a ray of daylight,” I thought, “slipping in through this cleft in the rock! And that is indeed the sound of waves and of wind! Am I quite mis- taken, or have we returned to the surface of the Earth? Has my uncle given up on the expedition? Has it come to a successful conclusion?” I was puzzling over these unanswerable questions when the professor entered.

from jourNey to the ceNter of the earth 29

“Good morning, Axel!” he said cheerily. “I bet you are feeling better today!” “Yes, much better!” I replied, sitting up on the blankets. “I expected so, for you have slept quite soundly. Hans and I took turns watching over you, and we could see you recovering little by little.” “I really do feel a great deal better, and I will gladly give you proof if you offer me some breakfast!” “Certainly you shall eat, my boy! The fever has left you. Hans rubbed your wounds with a special ointment known only to Icelanders, and they have healed marvelously. Our hunter is quite a fellow!” While he talked, my uncle prepared a few provisions, which I devoured eagerly, notwithstanding his advice to the contrary. While I ate, I over- whelmed him with questions which he promptly answered. I then learned that my providential fall had brought me to the end of an almost perpendicular shaft; and as I had landed in the midst of a torrent of stones, the smallest of which would have been enough to crush me, the conclusion was that a loose portion of the rock-face had come down with me upon it. This frightful conveyance had carried me into the arms of my uncle, where I fell bleeding and unconscious. “I am truly amazed,” he said to me, “that you were not killed a thousand times over. For the love of God, let us never separate again, or we might not ever see each other again!” “Never separate again”? Was the journey not over, then? I opened my eyes wide with astonishment, which immediately raised the question: “What is the matter, Axel?” “I have a question to ask you. You say that I am safe and sound?” “Without a doubt.” “And I have all my limbs intact?” “Certainly.” “And my head?” “Your head, except for a few bruises, is perfectly all right and still sitting on your shoulders, where it ought to be.” “Well, I am afraid that my brain has been affected.” “Your brain?” “Yes, I fear so. We haven’t returned to surface of the Earth, have we?” “No, of course not.” “Then I must be crazy; for I seem to see shafts of daylight. And I seem to hear the wind blowing outside, and waves breaking on a shore!” “Ah! is that all?” “Will you explain to me . . . ?”

30 juleS VerNe

“I can’t explain the inexplicable. But you will soon see and understand that the science of geology has not yet learned all that there is to learn.” “Then let us go,” I answered, rising quickly. “No, Axel; the open air might be bad for you.” “Open air?” “Yes; the wind is rather strong. I don’t want you to risk exposing your- self.” “But I assure you that I am perfectly well.” “A little patience, my boy. A relapse might get us into trouble, and we have no time to lose, for the voyage may be a long one.” “The voyage?” “Yes, rest today, and tomorrow we will set sail.” “Set sail?” This last word made me almost leap to my feet. Sail? Was there a river, a lake, a sea nearby? Was there a ship anchored in some underground har- bor? My curiosity was now greatly aroused, and my uncle tried in vain to re- strain me. When he saw that my impatience would do me more harm than answering my queries, he finally yielded. I got dressed rapidly. As a precaution, I wrapped myself in a blanket and then walked out of the grotto. At first I could see nothing at all. My eyes, unaccustomed to the light, closed themselves tight. When I was able to reopen them, I was more stupe- fied than surprised. “The sea!” I cried. “Yes,” my uncle replied, “the Lidenbrock Sea! I don’t suppose any other ex- plorer will dispute my claim to name it since I was the first to discover it.” A vast expanse of water, the beginning of a huge lake or ocean, stretched away as far as the eye could see. The deeply indented shoreline offered to the swells which lapped against it a beach of fine golden sand, strewn with the small shells that were once inhabited by the first beings in creation. The waves broke on this shore with the hollow sonorous murmur peculiar to vast enclosed spaces. A light spray whipped up from the waves by a steady breeze moistened my face. On this gently sloping shore, about two hundred yards from the edge of the waves, began an abrupt wall of enormous cliffs that curved upward to an incredible height. Some of these, piercing the beach with their sharp spurs, formed capes and promontories that were worn away by the ceaseless action of the surf. Farther along the shore, the eye could discern their massive outline sharply defined against the hazy distant horizon.

from jourNey to the ceNter of the earth 31

It was a real ocean, with the same irregular shores as on the Earth above, but empty and fearsomely wild in appearance. If my eyes were able to range far out over this great sea, it was because a strange light revealed its every detail. It was not the light of the Sun, with its dazzling shafts of brightness and the splendor of its rays; nor was it the pale and indistinct shimmer of the Moon, which is just a reflection without heat. No, the illuminating power of this light, its flickering diffusion, its bright, clear whiteness and its low temperature, indicated that it must be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, a continuous cosmic phenomenon, filling a cavern large enough to contain an ocean. The vault that was suspended above my head—the sky, if it could be called so—seemed to be composed of large clouds, moving and shifting banks of water vapor which, by virtue of condensation, must produce torrents of rain on certain days. I should have thought that under so powerful a pressure from the atmosphere there could be no evaporation; and yet, by a law un- known to me, here they were, great rolling clouds in the air above me. But at that specific moment “the weather was fine.” The play of the electric light in these layers of cloud produced singular effects upon their upper strata. Their lower portions were deep in shadow; and often, between two levels a sudden flash of remarkable brilliancy could be seen. Yet it was not the Sun, and the light lacked heat. The general effect was sad and quite melancholy. Instead of a firmament shining with stars, I felt that beyond these clouds existed vast walls of granite, which seemed to overpower me with their weight, and that all this space, vast as it was, was not enough for the orbit of the humblest of satellites. Then I remembered the theory of an English captain, who compared the Earth to a huge hollow sphere, whose interior air remained luminous be- cause of the high pressure, and where two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, circled about on their mysterious orbits inside it. Could he have been right? We were in reality imprisoned inside a cavern of colossal dimensions. Its width could not be estimated, since its shores widened as they stretched off into the distance; nor could its length be guessed at, for one’s gaze was blocked by its misty horizon. As for its height, it must have been several leagues. Where this vault rested upon its granite base was not evident. But there was one cloud hanging in the atmosphere above whose height we approximated at 12,000 feet, a greater altitude than that of any terrestrial cloud, and no doubt due to the greater density of the air. Obviously, the word “cavern” does not properly convey the idea of this immense space. But mere human words are inadequate for anyone who ven- tures into the deep abysses of Earth.

32 juleS VerNe

Besides, I did not know what geological theory could account for the exis- tence of such a huge underground space. Had the cooling of the globe pro- duced it? I knew of several famous caves from the descriptions of travelers, but had never heard of any that could rival the immense size of this one. The grotto of Guachara, in Colombia, visited by Humboldt, did not give up the secret of its full depth to this philosopher, who investigated it to the depth of 2,500 feet, but it probably did not extend much farther. The im- mense Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is of gigantic proportions; its vaulted roof is said to rise 500 feet above an unfathomable lake, and spelunkers have explored its interior for more than 10 leagues without reaching its end. But what were these subterranean cavities compared to the one I was now contemplating with admiration, with its sky of luminous vapors, its bursts of electric light, and this great sea contained within its depths? My imagi- nation was powerless before such immensity. I gazed upon these wonders in silence. I could not find words to express my feelings. I felt as if I were on some distant planet such as Uranus or Neptune and witnessing phenomena which had no equivalent in my terres- trial experience. For such new sensations, new words were needed; and my imagination failed to supply them. I stared, I thought, I marveled, with a stupefaction mingled with a certain amount of fear. The unexpectedness of this spectacle had brought back the color to my cheeks. I was healing myself with the medicine of astonishment, and my convalescence was aided by this unusual therapeutic treatment. In addition, the sharpness of the dense air was invigorating me, supplying extra oxygen to my lungs. It should be easily understood that, after being confined in a narrow tun- nel for forty-seven straight days, it was sheer bliss to breathe this moist, salty air. I had no regrets leaving behind my dark grotto. My uncle, already accustomed to these many wonders, had ceased to marvel at them. “You feel strong enough to walk around a bit?” he asked. “Yes, certainly! Nothing could please me more!” “Well, take my arm, Axel, and let’s follow the windings of the shore.” I eagerly accepted, and we began to walk along the edges of this under- ground sea. On the left, there were huge pyramids of rock, piled high one upon another, producing a prodigious effect. Down their sides flowed count- less waterfalls, flowing abundantly in clear gurgling cascades. A few light clouds of heated water vapor, leaping from rock to rock, denoted the loca- tion of a few hot springs. And, gliding down the gentle slopes, several fresh streams flowed softly to the common basin below.