whipped up the snakes, and ascended high over
the city.

The king, hearing the hiss of the serpents,
scrambled as fast as he could to the window,
and bawled out to the abominable enchantress
never to come back. The whole people of
Athens, too, who had run out of doors to see
this wonderful spectacle, set up a shout of joy
at the prospect of getting rid of her. Medea,
almost bursting with rage, uttered precisely such
a hiss as one of her own snakes, only ten times
more venomous and spiteful; and glaring fierce-
ly out of the blaze of the chariot, she shook her
hands over the multitude below, as if she were
scattering a million of curses amons: them. In
so doing, however, she unintentionally let fall
about five hundred diamonds of the first water,
together with a thousand great pearls, and two
thousand emeralds, rubies, sapphires, opals, and
topazes, to which she had helped herself out of
the king's strong box. All these came pelting
down, like a shower of many-colored hailstones,
upon the heads of grown people and children,
who forthwith gathered them up, and carried
tbem back to the palace. But King Aegeus told

[[39]]

p038 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p039w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p040

v?