what the old servant has already intimated to the nurse. "Thou sullen-browed woman," he says,
"Medea, I command that from this realm
Thou go an exile, taking thy two sons;
And linger not, for mine is the decree,
Nor will I enter in my house again
Till I have driven thee past the land's last bounds."
This decision of Creon cuts up, root and branch, all Medea's projects for revenging herself on Jason, his father-in-law, and his new wife. "Now," she says,
"My enemies crowd on all sail,
And there is now no haven from despair."
She speaks softly to the king, even kneels to him, to turn away his wrath. But Creon is too much in dread of her devices to revoke his sentence of banishment. All he will concede is for her and her sons to depart to-morrow instead of to-day. That morrow, Medea may have said to herself, you shall never see. She has gained time for compassing her revenge.
In her next speech she lets the Chorus into her secret so far as to make them sure there will be bloody work in the palace before the sun sets. "Fool that he is!" she says; "he has left me now only one thing to find—a city of refuge, a host who will shelter me after I have done the deed, since in this day three of my foes shall perish by dagger or by drug,—
"The father and the girl and he my husband.
······
For never, by my Queen, whom I revere
Beyond all else, and chose unto my aid,
