had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward,
until her whole nature was so imbued with them
that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence.
Poison was her element of life.
With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very air.
Her love would have been poison -- her embrace death.
Is not this a marvellous tale?'
Nathaniel Hawthorne
'Rappaccini's Daughter'
1844