lness. Even Zeus is displaying a marvellous longanimity in
his adverse state, and Pallas is positively frivolous. We must have
disembarked, however, upon the island of Paradox, for everything
goes by contraries; here I find you, Heracles, commonly so serene
and uplifted, sunken in the pit of depression. You should squeeze
the breath out of your melancholy, as you did out of Hera's snakes
so long ago.

HERACLES.

That was a foolish tale. Do you not recollect that I am not as the
rest of you?

EROS.

Come, man, brighten up! You look as sulky as you did when I broke
your bow and arrows, and set Aphrodite laughing at you. But I have
learned manners, and the goddesses only smile now. Cheer up! How is
your destiny a whit different from ours?

HERACLES.

That rude old story about Alcmena, Eros--it is impossible that you
can be the dupe of that? When I hunted lions on Cithaeron--that
really _was_ a gentlemanlike sport, my friend--when I hunted lions
I was not a god. Gods don't hunt lions, Eros; I have not gone
a-hunting since that curious affair on Mount OEta. You remember it?

EROS.

I have preferred to forget it.

HERACLES.

Only an immortal can afford wilfully to forget, and I--well, you
know as well as I do that I am only a mortal canonised. I never
understood the incident, I confess. I lay down among the ferns
to sleep, after an unusually heavy day's bag of monsters. It was
sultry weather; I woke to an oppressive sense of singeing, I found
myself enveloped in a blaze of leaves and brushwood.... But I bore
you, and what does it matter now? What does anything matter?

EROS.

No, no; pray continue! I am excessively interested. You throw a
light on something that has always puzzled me, something that----

HERACLES.

A dense black smoke blinded and numbed me. The next moment, as it
seemed--perhaps it was the next day--I was hustled up through the
aether to Olympus, and dumped down at the foot of Zeus' throne.
Perhaps you remember?

EROS.

Yes, for I was there.

HERACLES.

All of you were there. And Zeus came down and took me by the
wrist. Olympus rang with shouts and the clapping of hands. I was
hailed with unanimity as an immortal; the ambrosia melted between
my charred lips; I rose up amongst you all, immaculate and fresh.
But when, or how, or wherefore I have never known. And now I shall
never care to know.

EROS.

You are a strange mixture, Heracles; strangely contradictory. You
never quaile