Lives of Alcyone

In the meantime the lot of Aries was by no means a happy
one. His own immediate followers naturally accepted his statement
as to the cause of Castor’ s death, but there was a good deal of
doubt and suspicion among the majority of the populace, and people
feared and distrusted him more than ever. Ulysses also gave him a
good deal of trouble, though not quite in the same way as Castor
had done it was not so much that Ulysses desired to perform all the
experiments himself, as that he was constantly requiring to be
entertained by new marvels, and would not believe when Aries told
him that he had exhausted his repertoire. By this constant pressure
Aries was forced into exhibiting experiments with which he was only
imperfectly acquainted, gave rise to doubt in the King’ s mind.
To retrieve his position Aries employed all the magical arts
which he knew, even some which were decidedly dark in
complexion. By means such as these he wove kind of mesmeric
spell round Ulysses, so that the latter eventually became a mere tool
in his hands, and had scarcely any will of his own. But though in this
way he had obtained complete ascendancy over the King, he was
by no means free from trouble; in order to produce some of his
effects he had resorted to trickery, and one of his subordinates,
Scorpio, who knew of this, threatened to expose him to the King and
the people, and so obtained a powerful influence over Aries, which
he exercised mercilessly. Unfortunately his designs were more
personal and less innocent than those of Aries, and the latter
sometimes found himself involved in schemes which were intensely
hateful to him.
Among these was a plot with many complications, an account
of which is not essential to our story. One of its chief element
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