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She said this to try him, but Ulysses was very angry and said, “Wife, I am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it? He must have found it a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was, unless some god came and helped him to shift it. There is no man living, however strong and in his prime, who could move it from its place, for it is a marvellous curiosity which I made with my very own hands. There was a young olive growing within the precincts of the house, in full vigour, and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive tree and left the stump standing. This I dressed roughly from the root upwards and then worked with carpenter’s tools well and skilfully, straightening my work by drawing a line on the wood, and making it into a bed-prop. I then bored a hole down the middle, and made it the centre-post of my bed, at which I worked till I had finished it, inlaying it with gold and silver; after this I stretched a hide of crimson leather from one side of it to the other. So you see I know all about it, and I desire to learn whether it is still there, or whether any one has been removing it by cutting down the olive tree at its roots.”

Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. “I think it is most unkind of her, my dear,” she whispered. “Of course I go and stay with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You don’t know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You shan’t sit next either of them. You shall sit by me and amuse me.”

Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. “I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you,” she used to say, “and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough’s fault. He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never sees anything.”

“Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. ‘Damn ye,’ cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, ‘the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!’

The first attack the Grecians scarce sustain, Repulsed, they yield; the Trojans seize the slain. Then fierce they rally, to revenge led on By the swift rage of Ajax Telamon. (Ajax to Peleus’ son the second name, In graceful stature next, and next in fame.) With headlong force the foremost ranks he tore; So through the thicket bursts the mountain boar, And rudely scatters, for a distance round, The frighted hunter and the baying hound. The son of Lethus, brave Pelasgus’ heir, Hippothous, dragg’d the carcase through the war; The sinewy ankles bored, the feet he bound With thongs inserted through the double wound: Inevitable fate o’ertakes the deed; Doom’d by great Ajax’ vengeful lance to bleed: It cleft the helmet’s brazen cheeks in twain; The shatter’d crest and horse-hair strow the plain: With nerves relax’d he tumbles to the ground: The brain comes gushing through the ghastly wound: He drops Patroclus’ foot, and o’er him spread, Now lies a sad companion of the dead: Far from Larissa lies, his native air, And ill requites his parents’ tender care. Lamented youth! in life’s first bloom he fell, Sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell.

This was what they said, but they did not know what it was that had been happening. The upper servant Eurynome washed and anointed Ulysses in his own house and gave him a shirt and cloak, while Minerva made him look taller and stronger than before; she also made the hair grow thick on the top of his head, and flow down in curls like hyacinth blossoms; she glorified him about the head and shoulders just as a skilful workman who has studied art of all kinds under Vulcan or Minerva—and his work is full of beauty—enriches a piece of silver plate by gilding it. He came from the bath looking like one of the immortals, and sat down opposite his wife on the seat he had left. “My dear,” said he, “heaven has endowed you with a heart more unyielding than woman ever yet had. No other woman could bear to keep away from her husband when he had come back to her after twenty years of absence, and after having gone through so much. But come, nurse, get a bed ready for me; I will sleep alone, for this woman has a heart as hard as iron.”