And it chanced
that Agave, in her leaping, lighted near me, and I sprang from my
hiding-place, willing to lay hold on her; and she groaned out, 'O!
dogs of hunting, these fellows are upon our traces; but follow me!
follow! with the mystic wands for weapons in your hands.' And we, by
flight, hardly escaped tearing to pieces at their hands, who
thereupon advanced with knifeless fingers upon the young of the kine,
as they nipped the green; and then hadst thou seen one holding a
bleating calf in her hands, with udder distent, straining it asunder;
others tore the heifers to shreds amongst them; tossed up and down
the morsels lay in sight--flank or hoof--or hung from the fir-trees,
dropping churned blood. The fierce, horned bulls stumbled forward,
their breasts upon the ground, dragged on by myriad hands of young
women, and in a moment the inner parts were rent to morsels. So,
like a flock of birds aloft in flight, they retreat upon the level
lands outstretched below, which by the waters of Asopus put forth the
fair-flowering crop of Theban people--Hysiae and Erythrae--below the
precipice of Cithaeron."--
A grotesque scene follows, in which the [74] humour we noted, on
seeing those two old men diffidently set forth in chaplet and fawn-
skin, deepens into a profound tragic irony.
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