This the
goddess told him; but of the particulars of his son's adventures, of his
having been detained in the Delightful Island, which his father had so
lately left, of Calypso and her nymphs, and the many strange occurrences
which may be read with profit and delight in the history of the prince's
adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging that he would hear
them with greater pleasure from the lips of his son, when he should have
him in an hour of stillness and safety, when their work should be done,
and none of their enemies left alive to trouble them.
[Illustration: _Consulting how they might with safety bring about his
restoration_.]
Then they sat down, the goddess and Ulysses, at the foot of a wild olive-
tree, consulting how they might with safety bring about his restoration.
And when Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his enemies were a
multitude, and he single, he began to despond, and he said, "I shall die
an ill death like Agamemnon; in the threshold of my own house I shall
perish, like that unfortunate monarch, slain by some one of my wife's
suitors." But then again calling to mind his ancient courage, he secretly
wished that Minerva would but breathe such a spirit into his bosom as she
inflamed him with in the hour of Troy's destruction, that he might
encounter with three hundred of those impudent suitors at once, and strew
the pavements of his beautiful palace with their bloods and brains.
And Minerva knew his thoughts, and she said, "I will be strongly with
thee, if thou fail not to do thy part.
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