On one side is the
peristyle, with its square stunted pillars, looking as if the weight
above crushed them, though it wearies them no more than the heavens do
Atlas; on the other, a gateway, vast, low-browed, shadowy with Cyclopean
stones. Somewhat apart is a strange weird figure, ever and anon starting
up and tossing her arms wildly as she utters some new denunciation, and
then cowering down again in a despairing weariness. There are traces yet
in the thin, wan face of the beauty which enslaved Loxian Apollo, and of
the pride which turned his great love into a greater hate: round it hang
the black elf-locks, disheveled, that have never been braided since the
gripe of Telamonian Ajax ruffled them so rudely. In her great, troubled
eyes you read terrible memories, and a prescience of coming
death--death, most grateful to the dishonored princess, but before which
the frail womanhood can not but shudder and quail. No wonder that the
reverend men glance at her uneasily, scarcely mustering courage enough
sometimes to answer her with a pious platitude. Alas! alas! Cassandra.
While we gaze, forth from the recesses of the gynaeceum there breaks a
cry, expressing rather wrath and surprise than mere pain.
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