Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/258

230  in the morning the phantoms he had seen in the night; similar to Nebuchadnezzar, who had always forgotten his dreams.

Meanwhile the serpent told stories to the fair Amasidia to soothe her. He related to her how he had formerly cured a whole nation of the bite of certain little serpents, only by showing himself at the end of a staff (Num. xx. 9). He informed her of the conquests of a hero who made a charming contrast with Amphion, architect of Thebes. Amphion assembled hewn stones by the sound of his violin. To build a city he had only to play a rigadoon and a minuet; but the other hero destroyed them by the sound of rams' horns. He executed thirty-one powerful kings in a country of four leagues in length and four in breadth. He made stones rain down from heaven upon a battalion of routed Amorites; and having thus exterminated them, he stopped the sun and moon at noonday between Gibeon and Ajalon, in the road to Beth-Horon, to exterminate them still more, after the example of Bacchus, who had stopped the sun and the moon in his journey to the Indies.