Now she has gone too far--she has spoken too boldly. "Blood burnt the cheek-bone, each black eye flashed fierce: 'But this exceeds our license!'" --so he exclaims; but then, seizing his native weapon, stops ironically to search out an excuse for her. He finds it soon. She and her husband are but foreigners; they are "uninstructed"; the born and bred Athenian needs must smile at them, if he do not think a frown more fitting for such ignorance. But strangers are privileged: Aristophanes will condone. They want to impose their squeamishness on sturdy health: that is at the bottom of it all. Their Euripides had cried "Death!"--deeming death the better life; he, Aristophanes, cries "Life!" If the Euripideans condescend to happiness at all, they merely "talk, talk, talk about the empty name," while the thing itself lies neglected beneath their noses; they "think out thoroughly how youth should pass-- Just as if youth stops passing, all the same!" * * * * * As he proceeds, in the superb defence of his own methods, he sees Balaustion grow ever more indignant. But he conjures her to wait a moment ere she "looses his doom" on him--and at last, drawing to an end, declares that after all the ground of difference between him and her is slight. In so far as it does exist, however, he claims to have won. Euripides, for whom she stands, is beaten in this contest, yet he, Aristophanes, has not even put forth all his power! If she will not acknowledge final defeat: "Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!" --and he urges her to use it all, to "let the whole rage burst in brave attack." It is evident how he has been moved, despite his boasting--how eagerly he awaits her use of the rosy strength. . . . But she begins meekly enough. She is a woman, she says, and claims no quality "beside the love of all things lovable"; in _that_, she does claim to stand pre-eminent. But men may use, justifiably, different methods from those which women most admire, and so far and because she is a foreigner, as he reminds her, she may be mistaken in her blame of him. Yet foreigners, strangers, will in the ultimate issue be the judges of this matter, and shall they find Aristophanes any more impeccable than she does? (She now begins to put forth the rosy strength!) What is it that he has done? He did not invent comedy! Has he improved upon it? No, she declares. One of his aims is to discredit war. That was an aim of Euripides also; and has Aristophanes yet written anything like the glorious Song to Peace in the _Cresphontes_? "Come, for the heart within me dies away, So long dost thou delay!"