CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVENTH.

But, beating her palms together, "You villain, are you so brazen that you can speak?" she shrieked. "Don't you know what a serious crime you've committed? You have slaughtered the delight of Priapus, a goose, the very darling of married women! And for fear you think that nothing serious has happened, if the magistrates find this out you'll go to the cross! Until this day my dwelling has been inviolate and you have polluted it with blood! You have conducted yourself in such a manner that any enemy I have can turn me out of the priesthood!"

She spoke, and from her trembling head she tore the snow-white hair,

And scratched her cheeks: her eyes shed floods of tears.

As when a torrent headlong rushes down the valleys drear,

Its icy fetters gone when Sprint appears,

And strikes the frozen shackles from rejuvenated earth

So down her face the tears in torrents swept

And wracking sobs convulsed her as she wept.