Giovanni grew white as marble, and stood
motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there as at
the likeness of something frightful. He remembered Baglioni's remark
about the fragrance that seemed to pervade the chamber. It must have
been the poison in his breath! Then he shuddered--shuddered at himself.
Recovering from his stupor, he began to watch with curious eye a spider
that was busily at work hanging its web from the antique cornice of the
apartment, crossing and recrossing the artful system of interwoven
lines--as vigorous and active a spider as ever dangled from an old
ceiling. Giovanni bent towards the insect, and emitted a deep, long
breath. The spider suddenly ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a
tremor originating in the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni
sent forth a breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling
out of his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only
desperate. The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung
dead across the window.

"Accursed! accursed!" muttered Giovanni, addressing himself. "Hast thou
grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by thy breath?"

At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden.

"Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come down!"

"Yes," muttered Giovanni again. "She is the only being whom my breath
may not slay! Would that it might!"

He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright and
loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair had been so
fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as to wither her by a
glance; but with her actual presence there came influences which had
too real an existence to be at once shaken off: recollections of the
delicate and benign power of her feminine nature, which had so often
enveloped him in a religious calm; recollections of many a holy and
passionate outgush of her heart, when the pure fountain had been
unsealed from its depths and made visible in its transparency to his
mental eye; recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate
them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an
earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have
gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel. Incapable as
he was of such high faith, still her presence had not utterly lost its
magic. Giovanni's rage was quelled into an aspect of sullen
i