The answer to her prayer is very near; but bringing desolation in the guise of joy. Even as she kneels before the altar there comes a voice calling on the name of the king, as though it were the voice of the god himself. It is a stranger from Corinth; and the queen rises to receive his greeting. He is the bearer of good news, he says; a message from the people of Corinth, to Œdipus. They have declared him to be their king, in the place of Polybus, who is dead. It seems good news indeed. Polybus dead, there is no need now for the anxious king to fear that oracular menace from Delphi; and Jocasta’s heart bounds at the thought. “_Where stand ye at the last, Ye oracles of God? For many a year Œdipus fled before that man, in fear To slay him. And behold we find him thus Slain by a chance death, not by Oedipus._“[22] Œdipus is hurriedly sent for, and, hearing the news confirmed from the lips of the messenger, is caught up suddenly on a wave of exultation. In the violent reaction from his lifelong terror there is a rush of joy which has something sinister in it, by its very excess. Jocasta was right. It was a lying oracle which said he should slay his father; and in the first sense of relief he vows that never again will he trust in seer-craft. But the words are hardly cold upon his lips, when he remembers that he has still one other thing to fear. The curse had been, “To slay his father and marry with his mother”; and while Queen Merope lives he must therefore always be an exile from Corinth. But Jocasta is not daunted. Possessed by her conviction that all oracles are false and evil, she tries to reason away his fear. JOC. _What should man do with fear, who hath but Chance Above him, and no sight nor governance Of things to be? To live as life may run, No fear, no fret, were wisest ‘neath the sun. And thou, fear not thy mother. Prophets deem A deed wrought that is wrought but in a dream. And he to whom these things are nothing, best Will bear his burden._[22]