and thunderstruck at the novelty of my crime, I asked her why she was so
angry and why she pitied the goose rather than myself.




CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVENTH.

But, beating her palms together, "You villain, are you so brazen that you
can speak?" she shrieked. "Don't you know what a serious crime you've
committed? You have slaughtered the delight of Priapus, a goose, the
very darling of married women! And for fear you think that nothing
serious has happened, if the magistrates find this out you'll go to the
cross! Until this day my dwelling has been inviolate and you have
polluted it with blood! You have conducted yourself in such a manner
that any enemy I have can turn me out of the priesthood!"

She spoke, and from her trembling head she tore the snow-white hair,
And scratched her cheeks: her eyes shed floods of tears.
As when a torrent headlong rushes down the valleys drear,
Its icy fetters gone when Sprint appears,
And strikes the frozen shackles from rejuvenated earth
So down her face the tears in torrents swept
And wracking sobs convulsed her as she wept.

"Please don't make such a fuss," I said, "I'll give you an ostrich in
place of your goose!" While she sat upon the cot and, to my
stupefaction, bewailed the death of the goose, Proselenos came in with
the materials for the sacrifice. Seeing the dead goose and inquiring the
cause of her grief, she herself commenced to weep more violently still