STREPSIADES. Alas! oh Clouds! 'tis hard indeed, but 'tis just! I ought not to have cheated my creditors.... But come, my dear son, come with me to take vengeance on this wretched Chaerephon and on Socrates, who have deceived us both.
PHIDIPPIDES. I shall do nothing against our masters.
STREPSIADES. Oh! show some reverence for ancestral Zeus!
PHIDIPPIDES. Mark him and his ancestral Zeus! What a fool you are! Does any such being as Zeus exist?
PHIDIPPIDES. No, a thousand times no! The ruler of the world is the Whirlwind, that has unseated Zeus.
STREPSIADES. He has not dethroned him. I believed it, because of this whirligig here. Unhappy wretch that I am! I have taken a piece of clay to be a god.
PHIDIPPIDES. Very well! Keep your stupid nonsense for your own consumption. (_Exit_.)
STREPSIADES. Oh! what madness! I had lost my reason when I threw over the gods through Socrates' seductive phrases. Oh! good Hermes, do not destroy me in your wrath. Forgive me; their babbling had driven me crazy. Be my councillor. Shall I pursue them at law or shall I...? Order and I obey.--You are right, no law-suit; but up! let us burn down the home of those praters. Here, Xanthias, here! take a ladder, come forth and arm yourself with an axe; now mount upon the school, demolish the roof, if you love your master, and may the house fall in upon them, Ho! bring me a blazing torch! There is more than one of them, arch-impostors as they are, on whom I am determined to have vengeance.
STREPSIADES. Come, torch, do your duty! Burst into full flame!
STREPSIADES. What am I up to? Why, I am entering upon a subtle argument with the beams of the house.
SECOND DISCIPLE. Hullo! hullo! who is burning down our house?
STREPSIADES. The man whose cloak you have appropriated.
SECOND DISCIPLE. But we are dead men, dead men!
STREPSIADES. That is just exactly what I hope, unless my axe plays me false, or I fall and break my neck.
SOCRATES. Hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there?
STREPSIADES. I traverse the air and contemplate the sun.[574]
SOCRATES. Ah! ah! woe is upon me! I am suffocating!
CHAEREPHON. Ah! you insulted the gods! Ah! you studied the face of the moon! Chase them, strike and beat them down! Forward! they have richly deserved their fate--above all, by reason of their blasphemies.