The guards brought the gleaming apple to the king. When he had taken it into his hand and had smelled its fragrance, old trembling Pelias asked where the apple had come from. The guards told him it had been brought by an ancient woman who was now outside seated on a stone in the courtyard.
He looked on the shining apple and he felt its fragrance and he could not help thinking, old trembling Pelias, that this apple might be the means of bringing him back to the fullness of health and courage that he had had before. He sent for the ancient woman who had brought it that she might tell him where it had come from and who it was that had sent it to him. Then the guards brought Medea before him.
She saw an old man, white-faced and trembling, with shaking hands and eyes that looked on her fearfully. “Who are you,” [pg 278] he asked, “and from whence came the apple that you had them bring me?”
Medea, standing before him, looked a withered and shrunken beldame, a woman bent with years, but yet with eyes that were bright and living. She came near him and she said: “The apple, O King, came from the garden that is watched over by the Daughters of the Evening Land. He who eats it has a little of the weight of old age taken from him. But things more wonderful even than the shining apples grow in that far garden. There are plants there the juices of which make youthful again all aged and failing things. The apple would bring you a little way toward the vigor of your prime. But the juices I have can bring you to a time more wonderful—back even to the strength and the glory of your youth.”
When the king heard her say this a light came into his heavy eyes, and his hands caught Medea and drew her to him. “Who are you?” he cried, “who speak of the garden watched over by the Daughters of the Evening Land? Who are you who speak of juices that can bring back one to the strength and glory of his youth?”
Medea answered: “I am a woman who has known many and great griefs, O king. My griefs have brought me through the world. Many have searched for the garden watched over by the Daughters of the Evening Land, but I came to it unthinkingly, and without wanting them I gathered the gleaming apples and took from the plants there the juices that can bring youth back.” [pg 279]
Pelias said: “If you have been able to come by those juices, how is it that you remain in woeful age and decrepitude?”
She said: “Because of my many griefs, king, I would not renew my life. I would be ever nearer death and the end of all things. But you are a king and have all things you desire at your hand—beauty and state and power. Surely if any one would desire it, you would desire to have youth back to you.”
Pelias, when he heard her say this, knew that besides youth there was nothing that he desired. After crimes that had gone through the whole of his manhood he had secured for himself the kingdom that Cretheus had founded. But old age had come on him, and the weakness of old age, and the power he had won was falling from his hands. He would be overthrown in his weakness, or else he would soon come to die, and there would be an end then to his name and to his kingship.
How fortunate above all kings he would be, he thought, if it could be that some one should come to him with juices that would renew his youth! He looked longingly into the eyes of the ancient-seeming woman before him, and he said: “How is it that you show no gains from the juices that you speak of? You are old and in woeful decrepitude. Even if you would not win back to youth you could have got riches and state for that which you say you possess.”