ne another and starting up afresh to
renew the contest. Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or
bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the
illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.

Sometimes he endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid
walk through the streets of Padua or beyond its gates: his footsteps
kept time with the throbbings of his brain, so that the walk was apt to
accelerate itself to a race. One day he found himself arrested; his arm
was seized by a portly personage, who had turned back on recognizing
the young man and expended much breath in overtaking him.

"Signor Giovanni! Stay, my young friend!" cried he. "Have you forgotten
me? That might well be the case if I were as much altered as yourself."

It was Baglioni, whom Giovanni had avoided ever since their first
meeting, from a doubt that the professor's sagacity would look too
deeply into his secrets. Endeavoring to recover himself, he stared
forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a
man in a dream.

"Yes; I am Giovanni Guasconti. You are Professor Pietro Baglioni. Now
let me pass!"

"Not yet, not yet, Signor Giovanni Guasconti," said the professor,
smiling, but at the same time scrutinizing the youth with an earnest
glance. "What! did I grow up side by side with your father? and shall
his son pass me like a stranger in these old streets of Padua? Stand
still, Signor Giovanni; for we must have a word or two before we part."

"Speedily, then, most worshipful professor, speedily," said Giovanni,
with feverish impatience. "Does not your worship see that I am in
haste?"

Now, while he was speaking there came a man in black along the street,
stooping and moving feebly like a person in inferior health. His face
was all overspread with a most sickly and sallow hue, but yet so
pervaded with an expression of piercing and active intellect that an
observer might easily have overlooked the merely physical attributes
and have seen only this wonderful energy. As he passed, this person
exchanged a cold and distant salutation with Baglioni, but fixed his
eyes upon Giovanni with an intentness that seemed to bring out whatever
was within him worthy of notice. Nevertheless, there was a peculiar
quietness in the look, as if taking merely a speculative, not a human
interest, in the young man.

"It is Dr. Rappaccini!" whispered the professor when the stranger had
passed. "Has he ever seen