Page:Sophocles' King Oedipus.pdf/54

44. Great already are the misfortunes of this house, and you bring us a new tale.

. A short tale in the telling; Jocasta, our queen, is dead.

. Alas, miserable woman, how did she die?

. By her own hand. It cannot be as terrible to you as to one that saw it with his eyes, yet so far as words can serve, you shall see it. When she had come into the vestibule, she ran half crazed towards her marriage bed, clutching at her hair with the fingers of both hands, and once within the chamber dashed the doors together be­hind her. Then called upon the name of Laius, long since dead, remembering that son who killed the father and upon the mother begot an accursed race. And wailed because of that marriage wherein she had borne a twofold race—husband by husband, children by her child. Then Oedipus with a shriek burst in and rushing here and there asked for a sword, asked where he would find the wife that was no wife but a mother who had borne his children and himself. Nobody answered him, we all stood dumb; but super­ natural power helped him for, with a dreadful shriek, as though beckoned, he sprang at the double doors, drove them in, burst the bolts out of their sockets, and rushed into the room. There we saw the woman hanging in a