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"Hercules throws the club aside and sits down at the distaff, when Omphale beckons, and the beautiful Esther and the daughter of Herodias " murmured Wilhelm indignantly. He felt sorely troubled, and longed for his quiet attic chamber beside the dove-cote. "Something unpleasant has happened to him in Delft," thought his father.

That same Hercules who proposed to violate all the fifty daughters of Thespis was compelled to spin at the feet of Omphale, and Samson, the strong man, was less strong than Delilah. This power cannot be taken from woman; it is hers by right; she would have lost it long ago, were it possible. The consequences of sex are wholly unlike for man and woman.

For the King came to the land of Tiryns, looking for certain horses, and Hercules caught him unawares, having his thoughts one way and his eyes another, and cast him down from the cliff that he died. Then Zeus was very wroth because he had slain him by craft, as he had never slain any man before, and caused that he should be sold for a year as a bond-slave to Queen Omphalé.

Having noticed these scraps of ancient art, the visitor may direct his attention to the lower shelf, where he will observe some beautiful busts. These include one supposed to be of Sappho; a Minerva with a Corinthian helmet found at Rome; Bacchus; Apollo; a Parian marble bust of Diana from Rome; a queenly Juno wearing the splendone; terminal busts, joined back to back, of Hercules and Omphale.

'Even as Jove prized Danaë above the Queen of Heaven, even as Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the Jews Bathsheba above.... She murmured 'Oh, oh, and placed her arms around his shoulders. 'How I love thy brave words!

Is his case a rare one? and don't we see every day in the world many an honest Hercules at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons prostrate in Delilah's lap?

At the end of his three years' slavery he could come back to Calydon and wed Deianira. And so Heracles and Deianira were parted. He was sold as a slave in Lydia; the one who bought him was a woman, a widow named Omphale. To her house Heracles went, carrying his armor and wearing his lion's skin.

It was while he was in slavery to Omphale that he liberated Theseus from the dungeon in which he was held with Peirithous, and it was while he still was in slavery that he made his journey to Troy. At Troy he helped to repair for King Laomedon the great walls that years before Apollo and Poseidon had built around the city.

Henceforth she resolved her life should be free and chainless as the winds. Never more should needle and thread tempt her to a womanish inactivity. As Hercules, whose counterpart she was, changed his club for the distaff of Omphale, so would she put off the wimple and bodice of her sex for jerkin and galligaskins. If she could not allure manhood, then would she brave it.

In another version he was sold as slave to Omphale, who restored him to freedom. Their passion was mutual. The story has a likeness to a similar episode of Achilles. The spinning-wheel begins Andante in muted strings alternating with flutes and gradually hurries into a lively motion.