THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

Whom did the husband of this wretch first meet?
How meet him? Where behold him? Tell me all.
LEADER
Dost thou, my honoured mistress, call to mind
The youth that swept the temple? This is he.
CREUSA
O, through the liquid air that I could fly,
Far from the land of Greece, ev'n to the stars
Fix'd in the western sky! Ah me, what grief,
What piercing grief is mine!
TUTOR
Say, by what name
Did he address his son, if thou hast heard it?
Or does it rest in silence, yet unknown?
LEADER
Ion, for that he first advanced to meet him.
And of what mother?
TUTOR
LEADER
That I could not learn:
Abrupt was his departure (to inform thee
Of all I know, old man) to sacrifice,
With hospitable rites, a birthday feast;
And in the hallow'd cave, from her apart,
With his new son to share the common banquet.
TUTOR
Lady, we by thy husband are betrayed,
For I with thee am grieved, with contrived fraud
Insulted, from thy father's house cast forth.
I speak not this in hatred to thy lord,
But that I love thee more: a stranger he
Came to the city and thy royal house,
And wedded thee, all thy inheritance
Receiving, by some other woman now
Discover'd to have children privately:
How privately I'll tell thee: when he saw
Thou hadst no child, it pleased him not to bear
A fate like thine; but by some favourite slave,