Hirena. Why, the fool is out of his mind, he fancies he has got hold of us.
Agape. What is he doing?
Hirena. Now he presses the kettle to his heart, now he clasps the pots and pans and presses his lips to them.
Chionia. How ludicrous!
Hirena. His face, his hands, his clothes are all black and sooty; the soot which clings to him makes him look like an Ethiopian.
Agape. Very fitting that he should be so in body, since the devil has possession of his mind.
Hirena. Look, he is going. Let us wait to see what the soldiers who are waiting outside will do when they see him.’
The soldiers fail to recognise their leader, they take to their heels. Dulcetius repairs to the palace, where the gatekeeper scoffs at his appearance and refuses him admittance, in spite of his insisting on his identity and speaking of himself as dressed in splendid attire. At last his wife who has heard of his madness comes forth to meet him. The spell is broken and he discovers that he has been the laughing-stock of the maidens. He then orders them to be exposed naked in the market-place as a punishment. But a divine power causes their garments to cling to them, while Dulcetius falls so fast asleep that it is impossible to rouse him. The Emperor Diocletian therefore entrusts the accomplishment of the maidens’ martyrdom to Sisinnius. Two of the girls are cast into the flames, but their souls pass away to heaven while their bodies remain without apparent hurt. The third sister is threatened with shameful treatment, but before it is carried out she is miraculously borne away to a hill-top. At first the soldiers attempt in vain to approach her, but at last they succeed in killing her with arrows. The youthful, girlish traits which appear in both the mirth and the sorrow of the three sisters are well developed, and form a vivid contrast to the unrelieved brutality of Dulcetius and Sisinnius.
Quite a different range of ideas is brought before the reader in the next play, ‘Calimachus,’ which is Hrotsvith’s nearest approach to a love tragedy[502]. She took its subject from an apocryphal account of the apostles, but as Ebert remarks she handles her material with considerable freedom[503]. The opening scene shows her power of immediately presenting a situation. The scene is laid in the house of Andronicus, a wealthy Ephesian. The youth Calimachus and his friends enter.
‘Calimachus. A few words with you, friends!