I decided to give my human pets space a different theme for now. Rappaccini's Daughter is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne concerning a young student, Giovanni, going to away to the University of Padua. In his melancholy from the room that he rents he looks down at the beautiful garden of Dr. Rappaccini. It has number of exotic flowers, which the doctor distils into medicines. The flowers are so potent that Dr. Rappaccini must wear a great deal of protective clothing. Not so, his daughter Beatrice--she grew up among the flowers and has developed immunity to whatever plant toxins there may be; however, she herself has become poisonous. The following excerpt is when Giovanni first notices Beatrice:

"Soon there emerged from under a sculptured portal the figure of a young girl, arrayed with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of the flowers, beautiful as the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone. Yet Giovanni's fancy must have grown morbid, while he looked down into the garden; for the impression which the fair stranger made upon him was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those vegetable ones, as beautiful as they--more beautiful than the richest of them--but still to be touched only with a glove, nor to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden-path, it was observable that she handled and inhaled the odour of several of the plants, which her father had most sedulously avoided."

Unknown "Mr Mysterious" Peaceful - 16 years, 11 months, 3 days ago