presently be found to have wrought a great mischief, the issue of a fair hope.
Ch. It is nothing, surely, that concerns thy gift to Heracles?
De. Yea, even so. And henceforth I would say to all, act not with zeal, if ye act without light.670
Ch. Tell us the cause of thy fear, if it may be told.
De. A thing hath come to pass, my friends, such that, if I declare it, ye will hear a marvel whereof none could have dreamed.
That with which I was lately anointing the festal robe,—a white tuft of fleecy sheep's wool,—hath disappeared,—not consumed by anything in the house, but self-devoured and self-destroyed, as it crumbled down from the surface of a stone. But I must tell the story more at length, that thou mayest know exactly how this thing befell.
I neglected no part680 of the precepts which the savage Centaur gave me, when the bitter barb was rankling in his side: they were in my memory, like the graven words which no hand may wash from a tablet of bronze. Now these were his orders, and I obeyed them:—to keep this unguent in a secret place, always remote from fire and from the sun's warm ray, until I should apply it, newly spread, where I wished. So had I done. And now, when the moment for action had come, I performed the anointing privily in the house,690 with a tuft of soft wool which I had plucked from a sheep of our home-flock; then I folded up my gift, and laid it, unvisited by sunlight, within its casket, as ye saw.
But as I was going back into the house, I beheld
