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
professor 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 Baglioni; "and, were I to fancy any kind of odor, it would
be that of some vile apothecary drug, wherewith my fingers are
likely enough to be imbued. Our worshipful friend Rappaccini, as
I have heard, tinctures his medicaments 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 opposite to his own, gave instantaneous
distinctness to a thousand dim suspicions, 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;