Away then with all personal considerations! Let me continue
to the end, as I began, without further digressions or anticipations,
pursuing the plain path of dispassionate History. The exact facts,
the exact words, -- and they are burnt in upon my brain, --
shall be set down without alteration of an iota; and let my Readers
judge between me and Destiny.
The Sphere would willingly have continued his lessons
by indoctrinating me in the conformation of all regular Solids,
Cylinders, Cones, Pyramids, Pentahedrons, Hexahedrons, Dodecahedrons,
and Spheres: but I ventured to interrupt him. Not that I was
wearied of knowledge. On the contrary, I thirsted for yet deeper
and fuller draughts than he was offering to me.
"Pardon me," said I, "O Thou Whom I must no longer address
as the Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe
thy servant a sight of thine interior."
SPHERE. My what?
I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines.
SPHERE. Whence this ill-timed impertinent request? And what
mean you by saying that I am no longer the Perfection of all Beauty?
I. My Lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to One
even more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate
to Perfection than yourself.
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