"Firm based is Justice; Fate of yore
Forged weapon for the blow;
Deep-souled Erinnys doth restore
Th' avenger to his home, and, lo!
He pays the bloody score."
And now the conspirators are come, Orestes and Pylades, with attendants. Orestes walks straight up to the great palace-gates, and knocks repeatedly. A servant at length, appears, and goes into the house to fetch some one to hear the stranger's application. Orestes had said,—
"Let one in trust, a woman bearing rule,
Come forth; yet more decorous were a man.
For when by bashfulness the tongue is swayed
Darkened is speech;—boldly man speaks to man,
And tells his message forth without reserve."
It is a woman who comes out to answer, and no less a woman than Clytemnestra. With the same unhesitating courage, the same exultant wickedness, with, which long ago she boasted of her crime as she stood over her husband's corpse, unchanged she comes out now, and behind her comes Electra. The queen receives the messenger with queenly courtesy. He tells his tale shortly and simply, using the Phocian dialect:—
"Orest. From Phocis I, a Daulian, stranger here.—
What time my home I left, for Argos bound,
Starting on foot, with baggage self-equipped,
A man to me unknown, as I to him,
Met me, inquired my route and told me his.
