To Beatrice—so radically had her earthly part been wrought upon by Rappaccini's skill—as poison had been life, so the powerful antidote was death. And thus the poor victim of man's ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there at the feet of her father and Giovanni.
Just at that moment Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunder-stricken man of science:
"Rappaccini, Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?"
ZODOMIRSKY'S DUEL
BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The elder Dumas was born in 1803 and died in 1870. His name appears as author on the title-pages of 257 volumes of stories and romances, and of 25 volumes of plays. He had ten collaborators or assistants who worked out details for him, the generals over whom he was a Napoleon—to quote his own phrase. He had to an extraordinary degree the ability to impart dramatic life and action to whatever he touched, and the whole modern school of historical writers is largely indebted to him for inspiration, from Stevenson down.
ZODOMIRSKY'S DUEL
By ALEXANDRE DUMAS
I