army, yet a sense of danger and calamities to come still overpowers them—an apprehension connected in some way with. that dread of excessive wealth which they have expressed so often. Cassandra is not inattentive to their forebodings: her gestures show that she shares them. But now Clytemnestra comes out again. She bids the captive prophetess, sternly but not insultingly, to accept her lot, and enter the palace as a slave. For a long time Cassandra listens in silence to the queen's command and the advice of the Chorus, her look growing every moment wilder, and her gestures more excited. At last she speaks, and cries again and again to Apollo, the author of her unhappy inspiration, of her sad prophecies that have been always disregarded, and with each repetition her ravings portend more clearly the dreadful deed that is to come. She looks round in horror at the palace-gates, and cries,—
"Dwelling accurst of God!
Dark home of murder and infanticide!
The lord lies slaughtered in that drear abode,
And the dank floor with bloody dew is dyed."
She calls to mind the impious feast of Thyestes, and speaks not dimly of another crime to come. Her beautiful face is disfigured with passion; her hair "streams like a meteor on the troubled air," as the vision forces itself more and more vividly on her reluctant soul. She sees the murderess raise her hand; she sees the bath in which the deed is done, and the Furies punishing the guilty queen. And her own fate, too, is before her:—
