w aweary of my burden. When thou hast slain Medusa, let me gaze
upon her face, that I may be turned into stone and suffer no more
forever."

And Perseus promised, and at the bidding of Atlas one of the nymphs
sped down to the land of the Shades, and for seven days Perseus and
her sisters awaited her return. Her face was as the face of a white
lily and her eyes were dark with sadness when she came, but with her
she bore the helmet of Pluto, and when she and her sisters had kissed
Perseus and bidden him a sorrowful farewell, he put on the helmet and
vanished away.

Soon the gentle light of day had gone, and he found himself in a place
where clammy fog blotted out all things, and where the sea was black
as the water of that stream that runs through the Cocytus valley. And
in that silent land where there is "neither night nor day, nor cloud
nor breeze nor storm," he found the cave of horrors in which the
Gorgons dwelt.

Two of them, like monstrous swine, lay asleep,

"But a third woman paced about the hall,
And ever turned her head from wall to wall,
And moaned aloud and shrieked in her despair,
Because the golden tresses of her hair
Were moved by writhing snakes from side to side,
That in their writhing oftentimes would glide
On to her breast or shuddering shoulders white;
Or, falling down, the hideous things would light
Upon her feet, and, crawling thence, would twine
Their slimy folds upon her ankles fine."

William Morris.

In the shield of Pallas Athene the picture was mirrored, and as
Perseus gazed on it his soul grew heavy for the beauty and the horror
of Medusa. And "Oh that it had been her foul sisters that I must
slay!" he thought at first, but then--"To slay her will be kind
indeed," he said. "Her beauty has become corruption, and all the joy
of life for her has passed into the agony of remembrance, the torture
of unending remorse."

And when he saw her brazen claws that still were greedy and lustful to
strike and to slay, his face grew stern, and he paused no longer, but
with his sword he smote her neck with all his might and main. And to
the rocky floor the body of Medusa fell with brazen clang, but her
head he wrapped in the goatskin, while he turned his eyes away. Aloft
then he sprang, and flew swifter than an arrow from the bow of Diana.

With hideous outcry the two other Gorgons found the body of Medusa,
and, like foul vultures that hunt a little