Rappaccinis Daughter
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Hawthorne, Nathaniel
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 68249
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 4
subject: giovanni
subject: beatrice
subject: rappaccini
subject: garden
subject: man
subject: professor
subject: looked
subject: unworthy
subject: palace
subject: paduan
subject: noble
subject: hawthorne
subject: nathaniel
subject: rappaccinis
subject: daughter
subject: american
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: hawthorne-rappaccinis-460.txt
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sort title: Rappaccinis Daughter
full text: 1844 TWICE-TOLD TALES RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne A YOUNG MAN, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice, which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since extinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the tendency to heart-break natural to a young man for the first time out of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily, as he looked around the desolate and ill-furnished apartment. "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 Lombard 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 potherbs than any that grow there now," answered old Lisabetta. "No: that garden is cultivated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccin…