The White Bull/Chapter VIII
CHAPTER VIII.
HOW THE SERPENT TOLD STORIES TO THE PRINCESS TO COMFORT HER.
Meanwhile the serpent told stories to the fair Amasidia to soothe her. He related to her how he had formerly cured a whole nation of the bite of certain little serpents, only by showing himself at the end of a staff (Num. xx. 9). He informed her of the conquests of a hero who made a charming contrast with Amphion, architect of Thebes. Amphion assembled hewn stones by the sound of his violin. To build a city he had only to play a rigadoon and a minuet; but the other hero destroyed them by the sound of rams' horns. He executed thirty-one powerful kings in a country of four leagues in length and four in breadth. He made stones rain down from heaven upon a battalion of routed Amorites; and having thus exterminated them, he stopped the sun and moon at noonday between Gibeon and Ajalon, in the road to Beth-Horon, to exterminate them still more, after the example of Bacchus, who had stopped the sun and the moon in his journey to the Indies.
The prudence which every serpent ought to have did not allow him to tell the fair Amasidia of the powerful Jephthah, who made a vow and beheaded his daughter because he had gained a battle. This would have struck terror into the mind of the fair princess. But he related to her the adventures of the great Samson, who killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, who tied together three hundred foxes by the tail, and who fell into the snares of a lady, less beautiful, less tender, and less faithful than the charming Amasidia.
He related to her the story of the unfortunate Sechem and Dinah, as well as the more celebrated adventures of Ruth and Boaz; those of Judah and Tamar; those even of Lot's two daughters; those of Abraham and Jacob's servant maids; those of Reuben and Bilhah; those of David and Bathsheba; and those of the great King Solomon. In short, everything which could dissipate the grief of a fair princess.