Heracles.
What change, indeed, has come over you,
you sulky artificer? Time was when your pincers would have met in the flesh of maid or man who disturbed you in your work. Have you left your forge to cool for the mere pleasure of clambering after these ridiculous children! Go back to it, Hephæstus, go back and be ashamed.
Hephæstus.
You do not seem deeply engaged yourself. You look sourer and idler than the lion's head that dangles at your shoulder. The days are long here, though not too long. My handicraft will spare me for half an hour to sport with these exquisite and affable fragilities. I rather enjoy being laughed at. On Olympus I was rarely troubled by such teasing attentions. The little ones seem to enjoy themselves in their exile, and, to say true, so do I. My work was carried on, I admit, much more smoothly and
surely than it can be here, and my hand, I am afraid, in crossing the sea, has lost much of its infallible cunning. But I enjoy the exercise, and I look onward to the art as I never did before, and I seem to have more leisure. Can you explain it, Eros?
Eros.
I do not attempt to do so, but I feel a similar and equally surprising serenity. Heracles is insensible to it, it seems, and he gives me a sort of reason.
Hephæstus.
What is it?