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Each wild utterance of Cassandra is followed by a short song from the orchestra in comment on her words. "Why," asks the Chorus,—

Again she is tortured with visions of the past scenes of horror that have defiled the house of Pelops. The murdered children of Thyestes pass before her eyes, with the same terrible distinctness with which the children and the eight kings force themselves on the fancy of Macbeth:—

Vengeance is coming for these things upon the house of Atreus; and though the she-wolf welcomes her lord with flattering words, yet death is certainly prepared for him. There is no longer any concealment. Cassandra foretells in plain words the crime of