Glory and the Lightning

Read Glory and the Lightning for Free Online

Book: Read Glory and the Lightning for Free Online
Authors: Taylor Caldwell
blooming and admired it openly, and so he had a reputation as a discerning man of much sensibility, which was entirely untrue. Unknown even to himself, disease terrified him and he felt it a threat to his own life, and a portent for the future.
    He had an eye which could sight the enemy even when it was hidden behind a rose-lipped young face or concealed behind bright eyes, and many were the maidens whom he had induced Thargelia to dispose of hastily to the first bidder. She never disputed him. She had seen the results too often when she had not followed his advice. The girls soon sickened and died, to the surprise and bewilderment of their patrons, but not to Echion. “Did I not tell you that the maiden had diseased kidneys or sluggish blood or a feeble heart, though these were not evident to you or to others?” he would say to Thargelia when she would read a mournful letter from some wealthy man who had taken the girl in good faith. “You did well to rid yourself of her. The purchaser?” Echion laughed. “A man who buys a horse or a woman should be knowledgeable in the matter, or he is a fool and deserves no sympathy.” He well knew that no maiden was actually purchased, for she was not a slave, and could leave her protector at her own will at any time, but he liked to consider the potentially ill, and therefore the weak, less than dogs or cattle.
    Above all the other beautiful maidens Aspasia enchanted him, though she was less than a docile pupil and provoked him into controversy. He preferred her disagreeable dissents, sharp remarks and questions, and disputations to the meek acceptances of the other girls. He saw little slavish respect in her great brown eyes, and knew that she listened avidly not only to learn but to pounce upon him if he showed doubt. But when she honestly admired him and leaned forward so as not to waste a single word his gratification was immense. He felt, to his own amusement, that he had received an accolade from a colleague and not a mere chit.
    “She is, in all truth, possessed of the soul of a physician,” he would say to Thargelia. “I marvel at her prodigious talents. It has been said that the beauteous woman has the soul of an ape, but it has been my experience that those endowed by the gods with intelligence are also agreeable to the eye.”
    “She is worthy of an emperor,” Thargelia would repeat.
    “Or of Apollo, himself,” he would reply. “But let us hope that Zeus, in whom I do not believe, does not discover her and bear her off in a shower of gold. Or impregnate her as he did Leda, though a woman who lays an egg might be an interesting spectacle to a physician.”
    “You are no Zeus,” Thargelia said on one occasion, with an affectionate but warning smile. “Let us remember that.”
    “But you are a veritable Hera, my adored one,” he replied with gallantry, and Thargelia laughed and shook her finger at him. “It is said, in the city, that you are tireless,” she remarked.
    “But, my divinity, that is only rumor. Am I not faithful to you?”
    “No,” said Thargelia. “But you amuse and satisfy me and I enjoy your conversation, and that is my contentment.” She looked momentarily troubled. “There are times when I fear that Aspasia will not be the happiest of companions to a man, for men do not cherish a dagger tongue in a woman. She is rebellious and not too supple of character. I advise and rebuke her often.”
    “There are men who prefer a woman of fire to a complaisant woman in their arms. Who would not prefer to subdue a spirited horse rather than a donkey, or a listless mare? You have a treasure in your house, Thargelia.”
    “Whom I guard,” she replied.
    So Echion, though he lusted after Aspasia, who was healthy and wondrous in appearance and intellectual, was ever decorous with his pupil. He luxuriated in his pleasant life, and not even an Aspasia would ever threaten it however much he desired her. But he had his fantasies, which had to satisfy

Similar Books

Down River

John Hart

Fidelity Files

Jessica Brody

Bloodwalk

James P. Davis

Just Good Friends

Ruth Ann Nordin

Journal

Craig Buckhout, Abbagail Shaw, Patrick Gantt

Run Wild With Me

Sandra Chastain