[Across the Zodiac by Percy Greg]@TWC D-Link bookAcross the Zodiac CHAPTER XXII - PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS 12/25
I could reclaim her, and call the force of the State to recover her.
When even this warning at first failed to enforce her submission, I swore by all I held sacred in my own world and all she revered in hers--by the symbols never lightly invoked, and never, in the course of ages that cover thrice the span of Terrestrial history and tradition, invoked to sanction a lie; symbols more sacred in her eyes than, in those of mediaeval Christendom, the gathered relics that appalled the heroic soul of Harold Godwinsson--that she should only defeat her own purpose; that I would reclaim my wife before the Order and before the law, thus asserting more clearly than ever the strength of the tie that bound me to her and to her house.
The oath which it was impossible to break, perhaps yet more the cold and measured tone with which I spoke, in striving to control the white heat of a passion as much stronger as it was more selfish than hers--a tone which sounded to myself unnatural and alien--at last compelled her to yield; and silenced her in the only moment in which the depths of that nature, so sweet and soft and gentle, were stirred by the violence of a moral tempest.... A marvellously perfect example of Martial art and science is furnished by the Observatory of the Astronomic Academy, on a mountain about twenty miles from the Residence.
The hill selected stands about 4000 feet above the sea-level, and almost half that height above any neighbouring ground.
It commands, therefore, a most perfect view of the horizon all around, even below the technical or theoretic horizon of its latitude.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|