nd shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily
arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study.

While Giovanni stood at the window he heard a rustling behind a screen
of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden.
His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no
common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly-looking man,
dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of
life, with gray hair, a thin, gray beard, and a face singularly marked
with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more
youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.

Nothing could exceed the intentness with which this scientific gardener
examined every shrub which grew in his path: it seemed as if he was
looking into their inmost nature, making observations in regard to
their creative essence, and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape
and another in that, and wherefore such and such flowers differed among
themselves in hue and perfume. Nevertheless, in spite of this deep
intelligence on his part, there was no approach to intimacy between
himself and these vegetable existences. On the contrary, he avoided
their actual touch or the direct inhaling of their odors with a caution
that impressed Giovanni most disagreeably; for the man's demeanor was
that of one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts,
or deadly snakes, or evil spirits, which, should he allow them one
moment of license, would wreak upon him some terrible fatality. It was
strangely frightful to the young man's imagination to see this air of
insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and
innocent of human toils, and which had been alike the joy and labor of
the unfallen parents of the race. Was this garden, then, the Eden of
the present world? And this man, with such a perception of harm in what
his own hands caused to grow,--was he the Adam?

The distrustful gardener, while plucking away the dead leaves or
pruning the too luxuriant growth of the shrubs, defended his hands with
a pair of thick gloves. Nor were these his only armor. When, in his
walk through the garden, he came to the magnificent plant that hung its
purple gems beside the marble fountain, he placed a kind of mask over
his mouth and nostrils, as if all this beauty did but conceal a
deadlier malice; but, finding his task still too dangerous, he drew
back, removed th