Page:Woman in the Nineteenth Century 1845.djvu/100

94 chosen to be the mistress of Agamemnon, Hecuba answers, with indignation, betraying the pride and faith she involuntarily felt in this daughter. Yet, when a moment after, Cassandra appears, singing, wildly, her inspired song, Hecuba calls her, “My frantic child.”

Yet how graceful she is in her tragic raptus, the chorus shows. If Hecuba dares not trust her highest instinct about her daughter, still less can the vulgar mind of the herald Talthybius, a man not without feeling, but with no princely, no poetic blood, abide the wild prophetic mood which insults all his prejudices. The royal Agamemnon could see the beauty of Cassandra, was not afraid of her prophetic gifts.