Silence and astonishment reigned in the spaces.  Then Socrates raised his voice, and continued: 

“The sunbeam falls upon the filthy puddle, and light vapour, leaving heavy mud behind, rises to the sun, melts, and dissolves in the ether.  With your sunbeam you touched my dust-laden soul and it aspired to you, Unknown One, whose name is mystery!  I sought for you, because you are Truth; I strove to attain to you, because you are Justice; I loved you, because you are Love; I died for you, because you are the Source of Life.  Will you reject me, O Unknown?  My torturing doubts, my passionate search for truth, my difficult life, my voluntary death—­accept them as a bloodless offering, as a prayer, as a sigh!  Absorb them as the immeasurable ether absorbs the evaporating mists!  Take them, you whose name I do not know, let not the ghosts of the night I have traversed bar the way to you, to eternal light!  Give way, you shades who dim the light of the dawn!  I tell you, gods of my people, you are unjust, and where there is no justice there can be no truth, but only phantoms, creations of a dream.  To this conclusion have I come, I, Socrates, who sought to fathom all things.  Rise, dead mists, I go my way to Him whom I have sought all my life long!”

The thunder burst again—­a short, abrupt peal, as if the egis had fallen from the weakened hand of the thunderer.  Storm-voices trembled from the mountains, sounding dully in the gorges, and died away in the clefts.  In their place resounded other, marvellous tones.

When Ctesippus looked up in astonishment, a spectacle presented itself such as no mortal eyes had ever seen.

The night vanished.  The clouds lifted, and godly figures floated in the azure like golden ornaments on the hem of a festive robe.  Heroic forms glimmered over the remote crags and ravines, and Elpidias, whose little figure was seen standing at the edge of a cleft in the rocks, stretched his hands toward them, as if beseeching the vanishing gods for a solution of his fate.

A mountain-peak now stood out clearly above the mysterious mist, gleaming like a torch over dark blue valleys.  The son of Cronos, the thunderer, was no longer enthroned upon it, and the other Olympians too were gone.

Socrates stood alone in the light of the sun under the high heavens.

Ctesippus was distinctly conscious of the pulse-beat of a mysterious life quivering throughout nature, stirring even the tiniest blade of grass.

A breath seemed to be stirring the balmy air, a voice to be sounding in wonderful harmony, an invisible tread to be heard—­the tread of the radiant Dawn!

And on the illumined peak a man still stood, stretching out his arms in mute ecstasy, moved by a mighty impulse.

A moment, and all disappeared, and the light of an ordinary day shone upon the awakened soul of Ctesippus.  It was like dismal twilight after the revelation of nature that had blown upon him the breath of an unknown life.