her in to die beside her paramour. He comes out again,
bearing (for his justification) the blood-stained robe of
Agamemnon;--but he comes out distraught and with the guilt of
matricide weighing on his soul. The Chorus bids him be of good
cheer, reminding him upon what high suggestion he has acted; but
in the background he, and he alone, sees the Furies swarming to
haunt him, "like Gorgons, dark-robed, and all their tresses hang
entwined with many serpents; and from their eyes is dropping
loathsome blood." He must wander the world seeking purification.
In the _Eumenides_ we find him in the temple of Loxias (the
Apollo) at Delphi, there seeking refuge with the god who had
prompted him to the deed. But even there the Furies haunt him--
though for weariness--or really because it is the shrine of
Loxias--they have fallen asleep. From them even Loxias may not
free him; only perhaps Pallas at Athens may do that; Loxias
announces this to him and bids him go to Athens, and assures him
meanwhile of his protection.

To Athens then the scene changes, where Orestes' case is tried:
Apollo defends him; Pallas is the judge; the Furies the
accusers; the Court of the Areopagus the jury. The votes of
these are equally divided; but Athene gives her casting vote in
his favor; and to compensate the Erinyes, turns them into
Eumenides--from Furies to goddesses of good omen and fortune.
Orestes is free, and the end is happy.

No doubt very pretty and feeble of the bronze-throated Eagle-
barker to make it so. What! clap on an exit to these piled-up
miseries?--he should have plunged us deeper in woe, and left us
to stew in our juices; he Should have shunned this detestable
effeminacy, worthy only of the Dantes and Shakespeares. But
unfortunately he was an Esotericist, with the business of
helping, not plaguing, mankind: he must follow the grand
symbolism of the story of the Soul, recording and emphasizing and
showing the way to its victories, not its defeats. He had the eye
to see deep into realities, and was not to be led from the path
of truth eternal by the cheap effective expedients of realism.
He must tell the whole truth: building up, not merely destroying;
and truth, at the end, is not bitter, but bright and glorious.
It is the triumph and purification of the soul; and to that
happy consummation all sorrow and darkness and the dread Furies
themselves, whom he paints with all the dark flame-pigments
of sheerest terror, are but i