The messenger seems to have continued with a picture of Phaethon’s fall. The body, still giving off the smoke of destruction, is next brought in, and we possess part of Clymene’s frantic speech. Her grief is mingled with terror: the strange manner of her son’s death may provoke her husband Merops to inquiry and reflexion and so her long-past union with the Sun-god may come to light. She bids them hide the body in the treasure-chamber, of which she alone holds the keys. Soon the king enters amid lyric strains celebrating the marriage-day of Phaethon. He is giving orders for merry-making when a servant hurries out to inform him that the treasure-chamber is giving forth clouds of smoke. Merops hastens within, and the chorus bewail the disclosure which is imminent. In a moment the stricken father is heard returning with lamentation. The course of the last scene is not certain, but probably a god reconciled the king and his wife, giving directions for the disposal of Phaethon’s body; a beautiful but obscure fragment,[802] redolent with the charm of breezes and murmuring boughs after all this blaze and splendour, seems to point to the story of Phaethon’s sisters, who mourned him beside the western waters and were transformed into poplars. This god was probably Oceanus,[803] the father of Clymene. He alone (deity of the world-encircling water) could give unity to these two pictures, the radiant eastern land of Phaethon’s youthful enterprise, and the distant western river where his sorrows and his end are bathed in dim beauty. This sketch allows us to realize how much we have lost in the _Phaethon_. The romantic events and setting recall the _Andromeda_. Clymene’s sorrow and shame mingle strangely with the gallant enterprise and bright charm of the whole, somewhat as Creusa’s story is contrasted with the fresh cheerfulness of Ion. Above all, the noble simplicity and high-hearted adventurousness of Phaethon, inspired by his new-found kinship with a god and chafing at the placid programme of domestic honour and luxury which his supposed father sets before him—this is a concept of boundless promise.