Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 39 of 235 (16%)
a straight path, if, every little while, he had not been
conscious of a gentle twitch at the silken cord. Then he knew
that the tender-hearted Ariadne was still holding the other
end, and that she was fearing for him, and hoping for him, and
giving him just as much of her sympathy as if she were close by
his side. O, indeed, I can assure you, there was a vast deal of
human sympathy running along that slender thread of silk. But
still he followed the dreadful roar of the Minotaur, which now
grew louder and louder, and finally so very loud that Theseus
fully expected to come close upon him, at every new zizgag and
wriggle of the path. And at last, in an open space, at the very
center of the labyrinth, he did discern the hideous creature.

Sure enough, what an ugly monster it was! Only his horned head
belonged to a bull; and yet, somehow or other, he looked like a
bull all over, preposterously waddling on his hind legs; or, if
you happened to view him in another way, he seemed wholly a
man, and all the more monstrous for being so. And there he was,
the wretched thing, with no society, no companion, no kind of a
mate, living only to do mischief, and incapable of knowing what
affection means. Theseus hated him, and shuddered at him, and
yet could not but be sensible of some sort of pity; and all the
more, the uglier and more detestable the creature was. For he
kept striding to and fro, in a solitary frenzy of rage,
continually emitting a hoarse roar, which was oddly mixed up
with half-shaped words; and, after listening a while, Theseus
understood that the Minotaur was saying to himself how
miserable he was, and how hungry, and how he hated everybody,
and how he longed to eat up the human race alive.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge