Lives of Alcyone

unworthy pretended son. She was however detected, taken prisoner
and brought before the Raja, who then sent for his mother, and said:
“ Here is your ancient enemy, against whom you vowed
vengeance for the death of my sister. Now I give her to you. What
will you do with her?”
But the defeated plotter looked so abject that Alcyone could
not retain her anger against her, so she said:
“ Her misery and failure are punishment enough. I forgive
her. Let her go.”
But the woman came immediately afterwards and asked to
see her, and threw herself at her feet, and wept over all the evil that
she had done, saying:
“ Now I die, for when I heard that I was too be delivered into
your hands I at once took poison, feeling that you could not forgive
me, but would torture me for all that I had done made you suffer.”
“ No,” said Alcyone; “ since you have thus repented you
shall not die,” and she sent for her own court physician and asked
what antidote there was for this poison. The administered it, and
though Alastor was already deeply under the influence of the drug
which she had taken, by long and careful nursing they succeeded in
saving her life. She afterwards devoted herself to an ascetic
existence of meditation and works of charity, to atone for her
previous evil deeds.
Herakles, now grown rather old and feeble, arrived one day at
Tiraganga, and brought terrible news to Alcyone, the news of the
death of her eldest son—the son whom, in her heart, she had
always loved the best. Herakles told her, with unaffected sorrow,
how he had loved the young man, of the swift progress the latter had