The play of the _Stella_ must now, perhaps, be considered, except so far as mere amplifications of the text are concerned, strictly complete. But another step was irresistibly suggested by the course it had taken. The massacre of the Innocents, although it lay outside the range of action in which the _Magi_ themselves figured, could be not merely threatened but actually represented. This was done at Laon[180]. The cruel suggestion of Archelaus is carried out. The Innocents come in singing and bearing a lamb. They are slain, and the play ends with a dialogue, like that of the distinct Limoges _planctus_, between the lamenting Rachel and an angelic _consolatrix_. The absorption of the motives proper to other feasts of the Twelve nights into the Epiphany play has clearly begun. A fresh series of examples shows a similar treatment of the _Pastores_. At Strassburg the _Magi_, as they leave Herod, meet the shepherds returning from Bethlehem: ‘Pastores, dicite, quidnam vidistis? infantem vidimus.’ This, however, is not taken from the _Pastores_ itself, but from the Christmas Lauds antiphon[181]. Its dramatic use may be compared with that of the _Victimae paschali_ in the _Quem quaeritis_. In versions from Bilsen[182] near Liège and from Mans[183], on the other hand, although the meeting of the _Magi_ and the shepherds is retained, a complete _Pastores_, with the angelic tidings and the adoration at the _praesepe_, forms the first part of the office, before the _Magi_ are introduced at all.