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 fiercely out of the blaze of the chariot,
she shook her hands over the multitude below, as if she were
scattering a million of curses among 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 them back
to the palace. But King Aegeus told them that they were welcome
to the whole, and to twice as many more, if he had them, for
the sake of his delight at finding his son, and losing the
wicked Medea. And, indeed, if you had seen how hateful was her
last look, as the flaming chariot flew upward, you would not
have wondered that both king and people should think her
departure a good riddance.

And now Prince Theseus was taken into great favor by his royal
father. The old king was never weary of having him sit beside
him on his throne (which was quite wide enough for two), and of
hearing him tell about his dear mother, and his childhood, and
his many boyish efforts to lift the ponderous stone. Theseus,
however, was much too brave and active a young man to be
willing to spend all his time in relating things which had
already happened. His ambition was to perform other and more
heroic deeds, which should be better worth telling in prose and
verse. Nor had he been long in Athens before he caught and