it lies within the power of my enchantments to get it for
you. Wait for me here an hour before midnight."

At the appointed hour you might again have seen Prince Jason and the
Princess Medea, side by side, stealing through the streets of Colchis,
on their way to the sacred grove, in the center of which the Golden
Fleece was suspended to a tree. While they were crossing the pasture
ground, the brazen bulls came towards Jason, lowing, nodding their
heads, and thrusting forth their snouts, which, as other cattle do,
they loved to have rubbed and caressed by a friendly hand. Their
fierce nature was thoroughly tamed; and, with their fierceness, the two
furnaces in their stomachs had likewise been extinguished, insomuch that
they probably enjoyed far more comfort in grazing and chewing their cuds
than ever before. Indeed, it had heretofore been a great inconvenience
to these poor animals, that, whenever they wished to eat a mouthful of
grass, the fire out of their nostrils had shriveled it up, before they
could manage to crop it. How they contrived to keep themselves alive is
more than I can imagine. But now, instead of emitting jets of flame
and streams of sulphurous vapor, they breathed the very sweetest of cow
breath.

After kindly patting the bulls, Jason followed Medea's guidance into
the Grove of Mars, where the great oak trees, that had been growing for
centuries, threw so thick a shade that the moonbeams struggled vainly to
find their way through it. Only here and there a glimmer fell upon the
leaf-strewn earth, or now and then a breeze stirred the boughs aside,
and gave Jason a glimpse of the sky, lest, in that deep obscurity, he
might forget that there was one, overhead. At length, when they had
gone farther and farther into the heart of the duskiness, Medea squeezed
Jason's hand.

"Look yonder," she whispered. "Do you see it?"

Gleaming among the venerable oaks, there was a radiance, not like the
moonbeams, but rather resembling the golden glory of the setting sun.
It proceeded from an object, which appeared to be suspended at about a
man's height from the ground, a little farther within the wood.

"What is it?" asked Jason.

"Have you come so far to seek it," exclaimed Medea, "and do you not
recognize the meed of all your toils and perils, when it glitters before
your eyes? It is the Golden Fleece."

Jason went onward a few steps farther, and then stopped to gaze. O, how
beautiful it looked, shining with