Meantime Minerva, designing an interview between the king's daughter of
that country and Ulysses when he should awake, went by night to the palace
of king Alcinous, and stood at the bedside of the princess Nausicaa in the
shape of one of her favourite attendants, and thus addressed the sleeping
princess:
"Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping here, and never bestow a thought upon
your bridal ornaments, of which you have many and beautiful, laid up in
your wardrobe against the day of your marriage, which cannot be far
distant; when you shall have need of all, not only to deck your own
person, but to give away in presents to the virgins that honouring you
shall attend you to the temple? Your reputation stands much upon the
timely care of these things; these things are they which fill father and
reverend mother with delight. Let us arise betimes to wash your fair
vestments of linen and silks in the river; and request your sire to lend
you mules and a coach, for your wardrobe is heavy, and the place where we
must wash is distant, and besides it fits not a great princess like you to
go so far on foot."
So saying, she went away, and Nausicaa awoke, full of pleasing thoughts of
her marriage, which the dream had told her was not far distant; and as
soon as it was dawn she arose and dressed herself, and went to find her
parents.
The queen her mother was already up, and seated among her maids, spinning
at her wheel, as the fashion was in those primitive times, when great
ladies did not disdain housewifery: and the king her father was preparing
to go abroad at that early hour to council with his grave senate.
"My father," she said, "will you not order mules and a coach to be got
ready, that I may go and wash, I and my maids, at the cisterns that stand
without the city?"
"What washing does my daughter speak of?" said Alcinous.
"Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, "that have contracted soil
by this time with lying by so long in the wardrobe. Five sons have you
that are my brothers; two of them are married, and three are bachelors;
these last it concerns to have their garments neat and unsoiled; it may
advance their fortunes in marriage: and who but I their sister should have
a care of these things? You yourself, my father, have need of the whitest
apparel when you go, as now, to the council."
She used this plea, modestly dissembling her care of her own nuptials to
her father; who was not displeased at this instance of his daughter's
discretion; for a seasonable care about marriage may be permitted to a
young maiden, provided it be accompanied with modesty and dutiful
submission to her parents in the choice of her future husband; and there
was no fear of Nausicaa choosing wrongly or improperly, for she was as
wise as she was beautiful, and the best in all Phaeacia were suitors to
her for her love. So Alcinous readily gave consent that she should go,
ordering mules and a coach to be prepared. And Nausicaa brought from her
chamber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach, and her mother
placed bread and wine in the coach, and oil in a golden cruse, to soften
the bright skins of Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the
river.
Nausicaa, making her maids get up into the coach with her, lashed the
mules, till they brought her to the cisterns which stood a little on the
outside of the town, and were supplied with water from the river Callicoe.
There her attendants unyoked the mules, took out the clothes, and steeped
them in the cisterns, washing them in several waters, and afterwards
treading them clean with their feet, venturing wagers who should have done
soonest and cleanest, and using many pretty pastimes to beguile their
labours as young maids use, while the princess looked on. When they had
laid their clothes to dry, they fell to playing again, and Nausicaa joined
them in a game with the ball, which is used in that country, which is
performed by tossing the ball from hand to hand with great expedition, she
who begins the pastime singing a song. It chanced that the princess, whose
turn it became to toss the ball, sent it so far from its mark that it fell
beyond into one of the cisterns of the river; at which the whole company,
in merry consternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked the sleeping
Ulysses, who was taking his rest after his long toils in the woods not far
distant from the place where these young maids had come to wash.
[Illustration: _And Nausicaa joined them in a game with the ball_.]
At the sound of female voices Ulysses crept forth from his retirement,
making himself a covering with boughs and leaves as well as he could to
shroud his nakedness. The sudden appearance of his weather-beaten and
almost naked form so frighted the maidens that they scudded away into the
woods and all about to hide themselves, only Minerva (who had brought
about this interview to admirable purposes, by seemingly accidental means)
put courage into the breast of Nausicaa, and she stayed where she was, and
resolved to know what manner of man he was, and what was the occasion of
his strange coming to them.
He not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and clasp her knees, as
suppliants should, but standing far off, addressed this speech to the
young princess:
"Before I presume rudely to press my petitions, I should first ask whether
I am addressing a mortal woman, or one of the goddesses. If a goddess, you
seem to me to be likest to Diana, the chaste huntress, the daughter of
Jove. Like hers are your lineaments, your stature, your features, and air
divine."
She making answer that she was no goddess, but a mortal maid, he
continued:
"If a woman, thrice blessed are both the authors of your birth, thrice
blessed are your brothers, who even to rapture must have joy in your
perfections, to see you grown so like a young tree, and so graceful. But
most blessed of all that breathe is he that has the gift to engage your
young neck in the yoke of marriage. I never saw that man that was worthy
of you. I never saw man or woman that at all parts equalled you. Lately at
Delos (where I touched) I saw a young palm which grew beside Apollo's
temple; it exceeded all the trees which ever I beheld for straightness and
beauty: I can compare you only to that. A stupor past admiration strikes
me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from approaching you, to embrace
your knees. Nor is it strange; for one of freshest and firmest spirit
would falter, approaching near to so bright an object: but I am one whom a
cruel habit of calamity has prepared to receive strong impressions. Twenty
days the unrelenting seas have tossed me up and down coming from Ogygia,
and at length cast me shipwrecked last night upon your coast. I have seen
no man or woman since I landed but yourself. All that I crave is clothes,
which you may spare me, and to be shown the way to some neighbouring town.
The gods, who have care of strangers, will requite you for these
courtesies."
She, admiring to hear such complimentary words proceed out of the mouth of
one whose outside looked so rough and unpromising, made answer: "Stranger,
I discern neither sloth nor folly in you, and yet I see that you are poor
and wretched: from which I gather that neither wisdom nor industry can
secure felicity; only Jove bestows it upon whomsoever he pleases. He
perhaps has reduced you to this plight. However, since your wanderings
have brought you so near to our city, it lies in our duty to supply your
wants. Clothes and what else a human hand should give to one so suppliant,
and so tamed with calamity, you shall not want. We will show you our city
and tell you the name of our people. This is the land of the Phaeacians,
of which my father, Alcinous, is king."
Then calling her attendants, who had dispersed on the first sight of
Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear, and said: "This man is no
Cyclop, nor monster of sea or land, that you should fear him; but he seems
manly, staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward appearance,
yet he has the mind's riches, wit and fortitude, in abundance. Show him
the cisterns, where he may wash him from the sea-weeds and foam that hang
about him, and let him have garments that fit him out of those which we
have brought with us to the cisterns."
Ulysses, retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in the cisterns from
the soil and impurities with which the rocks and waves had covered all his
body, and clothing himself with befitting raiment, which the princess's
attendants had given him, he presented himself in more worthy shape to
Nausicaa. She admired to see what a comely personage he was, now he was
dressed in all parts; she thought him some king or hero: and secretly
wished that the gods would be pleased to give her such a husband.
Then causing her attendants to yoke her mules, and lay up the vestments,
which the sun's heat had sufficiently dried, in the coach, she ascended
with her maids and drove off to the palace, bidding Ulysses, as she
departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it on foot at some
distance: which she did, because if she had suffered him to have rode in
the coach with her, it might have subjected her to some misconstructions
of the common people, who are always ready to vilify and censure their
betters, and to suspect that charity is not always pure charity, but that
love or some sinister intention lies hid under its disguise. So discreet
and attentive to appearance in all her actions was this admirable
princess.
Ulysses as he entered the city wondered to see its magnificence, its
markets, buildings, temples; its walls and rampires; its trade, and resort
of men; its harbours for shipping, which is the strength of the Phaeacian
state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld its riches, the
proportion of its architecture, its avenues, gardens, statues, fountains,
he stood rapt in admiration, and almost forgot his own condition in
surveying the flourishing estate of others; but recollecting himself, he
passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the king and queen were
sitting at dinner with their peers, Nausicaa having prepared them for his
approach.
To them humbly kneeling, he made it his request that, since fortune had
cast him naked upon their shores, they would take him into their
protection, and grant him a conveyance by one of the ships of which their
great Phaeacian state had such good store, to carry him to his own
country. Having delivered his request, to grace it with more humility he
went and sat himself down upon the hearth among the ashes, as the custom
was in those days when any would make a petition to the throne.
He seemed a petitioner of so great state and of so superior a deportment
that Alcinous himself arose to do him honour, and causing him to leave
that abject station which he had assumed, placed him next to his throne,
upon a chair of state, and thus he spake to his peers:
"Lords and councillors of Phaeacia, ye see this man, who he is we know
not, that is come to us in the guise of a petitioner: he seems no mean
one; but whoever he is, it is fit, since the gods have cast him upon our
protection, that we grant him the rites of hospitality while he stays with
us, and at his departure a ship well manned to convey so worthy a
personage as he seems to be, in a manner suitable to his rank, to his own
country."
This counsel the peers with one consent approved; and wine and meat being
set before Ulysses, he ate and drank, and gave the gods thanks who had
stirred up the royal bounty of Alcinous to aid him in that extremity. But
not as yet did he reveal to the king and queen who he was, or whence he
had come; only in brief terms he related his being cast upon their shores,
his sleep in the woods, and his meeting with the princess Nausicaa, whose
generosity, mingled with discretion, filled her parents with delight, as
Ulysses in eloquent phrases adorned and commended her virtues. But
Alcinous, humanely considering that the troubles which his guest had
undergone required rest, as well as refreshment by food, dismissed him
early in the evening to his chamber; where in a magnificent apartment
Ulysses found a smoother bed, but not a sounder repose, than he had
enjoyed the night before, sleeping upon leaves which he had scraped
together in his necessity.
Read next: CHAPTER SEVEN - The Songs of Demodocus--The Convoy Home--The Manners--Transformed to Stone--The Young Shepherd.
Read previous: CHAPTER FIVE - The Tempest--The Sea-bird's Gift--The Escape by Swimming--The Sleep in the Woods.
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