“Do you think so?” said Zeus quickly. “Then he shall repent it. I’ll teach him to call ME a pettifogging huckster. I’ll teach him to try to bribe ME. I’ll give him a lesson. Pass me those thunderbolts. I’ll scorch, and blight, and blast——”
“Gently, gently,” said Co. “We may just as well try and get a little fun out of it. We’ll see who can torture best—killing barred. You shall go first.”
So Zeus, who had plenty of force but very little skill, went to work in the old-fashioned way. He killed the man’s relations, burned down his house, destroyed his crops, wrecked his ships, reduced him to poverty, and afflicted him with the most distressing disease that the Punishment Department had in stock. And yet the man continued cheerful, saying that the gods were just and would yet send him prosperity.
“Oh, this is sickening,” said Zeus; “I can’t do anything with him. Now, Co., you try.”
“You’ve not left me much to work on,” said Co.; “you’ve taken away all the man has, except his baby son and his belief in us. I will give him something—a little accident—fever—cerebral disorder. See? Then he kills his child—you observe?—the child whom he loves more than himself. Then I restore him to his senses again. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Zeus, a little sulkily, “you’ve won, Co. What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” said Co. modestly. “It was just an idea. He could not be tortured any worse than that?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” objected Zeus. “You let me try again.” Number one hundred and three still lay moaning on the floor of the room.
“You can try, of course,” said Co.
Zeus still stuck to the old-fashioned plan of punishing by deprivation. There was only one thing left to take away—the man’s belief in the gods. So he took that.