any muleteer that plies for hire, you must have come across the
people of Lyons, and you must know that it is a far cry from Xanthus to the
Rhone." At this point Claudius flared up, and expressed his wrath with as
big a growl as he could manage. What he said nobody understood; as a matter
of fact, he was ordering my lady of Fever to be taken away, and making that
sign with his trembling hand (which was always steady enough for that, if
for nothing else) by which he used to decapitate men. He had ordered her
head to be chopped off. For all the notice the others took of him, they
might have been his own freedmen.

Then Hercules said, "You just listen to me, and 7
stop playing the fool. You have come to the place where the mice nibble
iron. [Footnote: A proverb, found also in Herondas iii, 76: apparently
fairy-land, the land of Nowhere.] Out with the truth, and look sharp, or
I'll knock your quips and quiddities out of you." Then to make himself all
the more awful, he strikes an attitude and proceeds in his most tragic
vein:

"Declare with speed what spot you claim by birth.
Or with this club fall stricken to the earth!
This club hath ofttimes slaughtered haughty kings!
Why mumble unintelligible things?
What land, what tribe produced that shaking head?
Declare it! On my journey when I sped
Far to the Kingdom of the triple King,
And from the Main Hesperian did bring
The goodly cattle to the Argive town,
There I beheld a mountain looking down
Upon two rivers: this the Sun espies
Right opposite each day he doth arise.
Hence, mighty Rhone, thy rapid torrents flow,
And Arar, much in doubt which way to go,
Ripples along the banks with shallow roll.
Say, is this land the nurse that bred thy soul?"

These lines he delivered with much spirit and a bold front. All the same,
he was not quite master of his wits, and had some fear of a blow from
the fool. Claudius, seeing a mighty man before him, saw things looked
serious and understood that here he had not quite the same pre-eminence
as at Rome, where no one was his equal: the Gallic cock was worth most on
his own dunghill. So this is what he was thought to say, as far as could
be made out: "I did hope, Hercules, bravest of all the gods, that you
would take my part with the rest, and if I should need a voucher, I meant
to name you who know me so well. Do but call it to mind, how it was I used
to sit in judgment before y