t of
Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for
it shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest
depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hung
between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around him
in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly felt
the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in the
universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a
running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had
heard some of the hollow notes of _Pan's_ music. Would the wicked river
drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?"
It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and most
suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world." It is this
combination of beauty and terror for which the myth of Medusa stands. It
finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is seen
in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of nature's
action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit beauty, and
fascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen in all of the
many cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be dangerous, or at
least sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is at once one of
the most characteristic and one of the most tragic things in the world.

There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyond
the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun never
shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the only
mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhood
she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and very
lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess.
Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire of
Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of
her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of the
golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that had
been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, with
its rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a loathsome greenish
white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning
mask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. So
dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess,