Glory and the Lightning Read Online Free PDF

least to the satisfaction of our scientists. He, too, is subjective. I consider objectivity only a confusion of men’s minds, and only private opinion, for on what subject can all men totally agree?”
    “Your reasoning is shallow and chaotic!” shouted the teacher, now beside himself with anger. He swept the sticks from the table and they fell, clattering, onto the floor. He wished he could do the same with Aspasia.
    “Reveal to me my error,” she said.
    The other maidens were delighted, but Aspasia frowned on them and said, “It is more than possible that my conclusions are as foolish as those of our teacher or of any other mortal. None of us has the truth about anything at all.”
    “You disturb and distract my students, to their disadvantage and destroy my authority,” said the teacher. “Remove yourself from my room and do not return until tomorrow.” He was more enraged than ever at her sudden smile of pleasure as she rose and left the room, her hair drifting behind her like a bright cloud, her lovely face serene and aloof. She resembled a nymph who had wandered here, unseen and unseeing, bent only on her own thoughts and desires and unaware of her surroundings.
    She went into the gardens where the shadows of sycamores and oaks and myrtle trees were sharp and greenly dark on the grass and the pebbled walks, and where birds in cages hung from branches and chattered with those free in the brilliant air. The flowers in their beds stung the eye with their intense vividness and the sky and the large fishpool resounded with passionate blue. To Aspasia color had sound for the ear, and the frail resonances of the warm fountains appeared to her to have a secret color of their own. In her all the senses were one and interchangeable, so that taste, smell, hearing, seeing and touching met in a single emotion, often too acute and ardent to be borne without an overwhelming turbulence of the spirit. She could hear the deep murmur of the sea beyond the gardens. The statues in grottos and in the fountains were clothed in light. A slight breeze lifted her hair and stirred her white long tunic and the sun heated her cheek and her feet and hands. A cluster of palm trees clattered their fronds, and a parrot in a cage screamed and then laughed. There were no other sounds but these.
    She could give herself wholly to joy and to the vehemence of the moment. She had already forgotten her unfortunate teacher. She had some time before she entered another classroom as a pupil. She lifted her delicate hands and let the sunlight stream through them, marveling at their sudden translucence and the rosy blood at their margins. What a wondrous thing was this world and all in it! A blade of grass, a stone, a leaf, held glories and mysteries beyond the words of any poet or philosopher. There was no common thing; nothing was gray or dull or lifeless or without beauty, but all shone with an inner splendor and astonishment at their own being. Nothing could be adequately explained or understood; nothing could be fully known. Therein lay the most profound of excitements, and amazements. She examined a lock of her hair, feeling its silken texture, its living presence. But, what was it in truth besides its seeming? What deeper reality was there behind what could be felt, tasted, heard, seen or touched?
    Her thoughts were still childish and full of wonder, but her intensity was not childlike, nor the passion that rose in her nubile breast when contemplating all that existed. She was seized with restlessness, and she suddenly clenched her hands together to restrain her fervor. She wished to fly, to rush into the sea, to fling her body upon the ground, to hold all things in her arms and make them one with herself. There was an enormous hunger in her which had no name, no lineaments, no shape, no form, but which devoured her and moved her, at times, to weeping. She longed for embraces from all that she saw and heard. A butterfly, as red as blood, blew like a