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 garden?"

"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 compressed, as it were and girdled
tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's