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 Giovanni, 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 whatever 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 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.