Oe. What, basest of the base,—for thou wouldest anger a very stone,—wilt thou never speak out? Can nothing touch thee? Wilt thou never make an end?
Te. Thou blamest my temper, but seest not that to which thou thyself art wedded: no, thou findest fault with me.
Oe. And who would not be angry to hear the words with which thou now dost slight this city?340
Te. The future will come of itself, though I shroud it in silence.
Oe. Then, seeing that it must come, thou on thy part shouldst tell me thereof.
Te. I will speak no further; rage, then, if thou wilt, with the fiercest wrath thy heart doth know.
Oe. Aye, verily, I will not spare—so wroth I am—to speak all my thought. Know that thou seemest to me e'en to have helped in plotting the deed, and to have done it, short of slaying with thy hands. Hadst thou eyesight, I would have said that the doing, also, of this thing was thine alone.
Te. In sooth?—I charge thee that thou abide350 by the decree of thine own mouth, and from this day speak neither to these nor to me: thou art the accursed defiler of this land.
Oe. So brazen with thy blustering taunt? And wherein dost thou trust to escape thy due?
Te. I have escaped: in my truth is my strength.
Oe. Who taught thee this? It was not, at least, thine art.
Te. Thou: for thou didst spur me into speech against my will.
