d ship _Argo_, Orpheus took his place with the others
and sailed the watery ways, and the songs that Orpheus sang to his
shipmates and that tell of all their great adventures are called the
Songs of Orpheus, or the Orphics, to this day.

Many were the mishaps and disasters that his music warded off. With it
he lulled monsters to sleep; more powerful to work magic on the hearts
of men were his melodies than were the songs of the sirens when they
tried to capture the Argonauts by their wiles, and in their downward,
destroying rush his music checked mountains.

When the quest of the Argonauts was ended, Orpheus returned to his own
land of Thrace. As a hero he had fought and endured hardship, but his
wounded soul remained unhealed. Again the trees listened to the songs
of longing. Again they echoed, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"

As he sat one day near a river in the stillness of the forest, there
came from afar an ugly clamour of sound. It struck against the music
of Orpheus' lute and slew it, as the coarse cries of the screaming
gulls that fight for carrion slay the song of a soaring lark. It was
the day of the feast of Bacchus, and through the woods poured Bacchus
and his Bacchantes, a shameless rout, satyrs capering around them,
centaurs neighing aloud. Long had the Bacchantes hated the loyal
poet-lover of one fair woman whose dwelling was with the Shades. His
ears were ever deaf to their passionate voices, his eyes blind to
their passionate loveliness as they danced through the green trees, a
riot of colour, of fierce beauty, of laughter and of mad song. Mad
they were indeed this day, and in their madness the very existence of
Orpheus was a thing not to be borne. At first they stoned him, but his
music made the stones fall harmless at his feet. Then in a frenzy of
cruelty, with the maniac lust to cause blood to flow, to know the joy
of taking life, they threw themselves upon Orpheus and did him to
death. From limb to limb they tore him, casting at last his head and
his blood-stained lyre into the river. And still, as the water bore
them on, the lyre murmured its last music and the white lips of
Orpheus still breathed of her whom at last he had gone to join in the
shadowy land, "Eurydice! Eurydice!"

"Combien d'autres sont morts de meme! C'est la lutte eternelle de la
force brutale contre l'intelligence douce et sublime inspiree du ciel,
dont le royaume n'est pas de ce monde."

In the heavens, as a bright constellation cal