However, I must go back to Tartarus, in spite of its unpleasantness. I was speaking of the Furies, who served under Nemesis as its jailers. These were three creatures like women, with hissing and writhing snakes instead of hair, holding a torch in one hand, and a whip made of live scorpions in the other. These whips were the whips of _Conscience_, with which they scourged and stung the souls both of the dead and the living. They were the chief servants of Nemesis, because the stings of Conscience are the most terrible of all her punishments. The Furies were the most dreadful creatures in or out of Hades. People had such awe and horror of them that they dared not even name them. The real name of the Furies was the "Erinyes," which means the desperate madness of those whom the gods or fates have cursed. But people who wanted to speak of them always called them the "Eumenides"--that is to say, "the Gracious Ladies"--just as timid people in England used to say "the Good Folk" instead of "the Fairies," for fear of making them angry by naming their real name. The tortures of Tartarus were of all sorts and kinds. Among the evil souls which suffered there, the most famous were the three wicked kings, Ixion, Sisyphus, and Tantalus. Ixion was tied by his arms and legs to the spokes of a wheel, which whirled round and round at full speed without ever giving him one moment's rest. Sisyphus had to carry up to the top of a high and steep hill a huge stone, which, as soon as he got it up, instantly rolled to the bottom again, so that his labor had no end. The torment of Tantalus was perhaps the worst of all. Maddened with hunger and thirst, he was chained to a rock in such a manner that he could not seize one of the delicious fruits that hung close to his eyes, or one of the cups of cool and fragrant drink which unseen hands put to his lips, and then, just as he was about to taste, snatched away again. Being "tantalized" means being treated like Tantalus. Then there were the Danaides, or the forty-nine daughters of King Dananus, who had all murdered their husbands, and were condemned to fill sieves with water, which of course ran out through the holes as soon as they poured it in. There had been fifty Danaides; but the fiftieth had taken no part in her sisters' crime. There was also the wicked giant Tityus, who was so huge that his body covered nine acres of ground, and whose punishment was, to be perpetually devoured by vultures. Souls not good enough for Elysium, but not bad enough for Tartarus, were treated in another way. Some were sent to wander about the world as Lemures, or homeless ghosts; others were given to drink of the waters of the Lethe, the river of Forgetfulness, which threw them into a dreamless sleep forever. PART III.--ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.