Page:Sophocles (Collins).djvu/51

Rh her husband, who, like her, exults at the tidings. Who need now believe that there is any truth in the Delphic god? Chance rules all; human foresight avails nothing; and oracles do but oppress the mind like a hideous dream.

But it is a false joy and a short-lived triumph. Œdipus himself is still haunted by a misgiving that the latter part of the prophecy may yet prove true; for Meropa, his reputed mother, is yet alive. Then the messenger, wishing to relieve him from this remaining dread, tells him the whole story of his birth—how he was in reality no son of Polybus, but a foundling exposed on Mount Cithæron; how he had been delivered by a shepherd of Laius to the very witness who now tells the tale; and how he in his turn had carried the child to Polybus.

There is one question still to be answered—one link still requisite to complete the chain of circumstantial evidence: "Who was the mother, and from whom had the shepherd received the child?"

Jocasta, who had at once realised the truth from the story of the Corinthian messenger, and who knows but too well what the answer of the shepherd must be, vainly tries to dissuade her husband from inquiring farther; and then, finding him obstinately bent on discovering the fatal secret of his birth, she can endure her grief no longer, but rushes from the stage in a silent agony of despair.

After a short interval of what must have been torturing suspense to Œdipus—an interval occupied by the Chorus in idle guesses as to what nymph or