What are those pure white needles you drop into the water? How quickly they dissolve. Ah! he lays the mixture to Cydippe's wound. She sighs; her eyelids close; her heart is beating. What is this magic, Æsculapius?
Æsculapius.
Do not tell your husband, Persephone, or he will complain to Zeus that I am depriving him of his population. But if there is magic in this, there is no miracle. [To
the others.] Take her softly into the house and lay her down. She will take a long sleep, and will wake at the end of it with no trace of the poison or recollection of her suffering.
[They carry Cydippe forth. Persephone, Maia, and Æsculapius remain.]
Maia.
Then—she was not dead?
Æsculapius.
No; it was but the poison-swoon, which precedes death, if it be not arrested.
Maia.