e voice
Of sorrow through the family that wept
Our mistress. Yet our tearful eyes we showed not,
Admetus so commanded, to the guest. {814}

He starts as he feels on his shoulder the huge hand of _Hercules_, who
has followed him, and _now appears on the Stage goblet in hand,
wreathed and attired like a reveller in full revel_. Hercules
good-humouredly scolds him for letting a remote family bereavement
hinder him from showing a sociable countenance to his lord's guest. He
lectures him on the easy ethics of the banquet-hour:

Come hither, that thou mayst be wiser, friend: {832}
Knowst thou the nature of all mortal things?
Not thou, I ween: how shouldst thou? hear from me.
By all of human race death is a debt
That must be paid; and none of mortal men
Knows whether till to-morrow life's short space
Shall be extended: such the dark events
Of fortune, never to lie learn'd or traced
By any skill. Instructed thus by me {840}
Bid pleasure welcome, drink; the life allow'd
From day to day esteem thine own; all else
Fortune's.

The Steward receives his lecture with a bad grace: he knows all
that--but there is a time for all things. His manner raises Hercules'
suspicions that Admetus has been keeping something back:

_Herc._ Is it some sorrow which he told not me? {866}
_Stew._ Go thou with joy: ours are our lord's afflictions.
_Herc._ These are not words that speak a foreign loss.
_Stew._ If such, thy revelry had not displeased me.

The secret is not long kept against the questioning of Hercules. When
the truth comes out Hercules drops the goblet: he might have known all
from so grief-worn a face! All the lightness of the reveller
disappears, and the godlike bearing returns to Hercules' figure as he
catches the full dignity of his friend's hospitable feat: he is fired
to essay a rival deed of nobility.

Now, my firm heart, and thou, my daring soul, {894}
Show what a son the daughter of Electryon,
Alcmena of Tirynthia, bore to Jove!
This lady, new in death, behoves me save,
And, to Admetus rendering grateful service,
Restore his lost Alcestis to his house.
This sable-vested tyrant of the dead
Mine eye shall watch, not without hope to find him
Drinking th' oblatio