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 to have
remained so near this extraordinary being that the proximity and
possibility even of intercourse should give a kind of substance
and reality to the wild vagaries which his imagination ran riot
continually in producing. Guasconti 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 vanquishing
one another and starting up afresh to renew the contest. Blessed
are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid