Her sister heard it. Breathless and frantic, with wild speed, disfiguring her cheeks with her nails, her bosom with her fists, she bursts through the press, and calls by name on the dying queen: “Was this your secret, sister? Were you plotting to cheat me? Was this what 25 your pile was preparing for me, your fires, and your altars? What should a lone heart grieve for first? Did you disdain your sister’s company in death? You should have called me to share your fate—the same keen sword-pang, the same hour, should have been the end of both. And 30 did these hands build the pile, this voice call on the gods of our house, that you might lie there, while I, hard-hearted wretch, was away? Yes, sister, you have destroyed yourself and me, the people and the elders of Sidon, and your own fair city. Let in the water to the wounds; 35 let me cleanse them, and if any remains of breath be still flickering, catch them in my mouth!” As she thus spoke, she was at the top of the lofty steps, and was embracing and fondling in her bosom her dying sister, and stanching with her robe the black streams of blood. Dido strives to raise her heavy eyes, and sinks down again, the deep stab gurgles in her breast. Thrice, with an effort, she lifted and reared herself up on her elbow; 5 thrice, she fell back on the couch, and with helpless wandering eyes aloft in the sky, sought for the light and groaned when she found it. Then Juno almighty, in compassion for her lengthened agony and her trouble in dying, sent down Iris[183] from 10 Olympus to part the struggling soul and its prison of flesh. For, as she was dying, not in the course of fate, nor for any crime of hers, but in mere misery, before her time, the victim of sudden frenzy, not yet had Proserpine[184] carried off a lock of her yellow hair, and thus doomed her head to 15 Styx and the place of death. So then Iris glides down the sky with saffron wings dew-besprent, trailing a thousand various colours in the face of the sun, and alights above her head. “This I am bidden to bear away as an offering to Pluto, and hereby set you free from the body.” 20 So saying, she stretches her hand and cuts the lock: at once all heat parts from the frame, and the life has passed into air. BOOK V Æneas, meantime, was well on his road, holding with set purpose on the watery way, and cutting through billows gloomed by the North wind, with eyes ever and anon turned back to the city, which poor Elissa’s funeral flame now began to illumine. What cause has lit up a blaze so 5 mighty they cannot tell; but as they think of the cruel pangs which follow outrage done on great love, and remember what a frantic woman can do, the Teucrian hearts are swept through a train of dismal presage.