“Then he crept from under the bush beneath which he had slept, broke off a thick bough so as to cover his nakedness, and advanced towards Nausicaa and her maids; these last all ran away, but Nausicaa stood her ground, for Minerva had put courage into her heart, so she kept quite still, and Ulysses could not make up his mind whether it would be better to go up to her, throw himself at her feet, and embrace her knees as a suppliant—­[in which case, of course, he would have to drop the bough] or whether it would be better for him to make an apology to her at a reasonable distance, and ask her to be good enough to give him some clothes and show him the way to the town.  On the whole he thought it would be better to keep at arm’s length, in case the princess should take offence at his coming too near her.”

Let me say in passing that this is one of many passages which have led me to conclude that the Odyssey is written by a woman.  A girl, such as Nausicaa describes herself, young, unmarried, unattached, and hence, after all, knowing little of what men feel on these matters, having by a cruel freak of inspiration got her hero into such an awkward predicament, might conceivably imagine that he would argue as she represents him, but no man, except such a woman’s tailor as could never have written such a masterpiece as the Odyssey, would ever get his hero into such an undignified scrape at all, much less represent him as arguing as Ulysses does.  I suppose Minerva was so busy making Nausicaa brave that she had no time to put a little sense into Ulysses’ head, and remind him that he was nothing if not full of sagacity and resource.  To return—­

Ulysses now begins with the most judicious apology that his unaided imagination can suggest.  “I beg your ladyship’s pardon,” he exclaims, “but are you goddess or are you a mortal woman?  If you are a goddess and live in heaven, there can be no doubt but you are Jove’s daughter Diana, for your face and figure are exactly like hers,” and so on in a long speech which I need not further quote from.

“Stranger,” replied Nausicaa, as soon as the speech was ended, “you seem to be a very sensible well-disposed person.  There is no accounting for luck; Jove gives good or ill to every man, just as he chooses, so you must take your lot, and make the best of it.”  She then tells him she will give him clothes and everything else that a foreigner in distress can reasonably expect.  She calls back her maids, scolds them for running away, and tells them to take Ulysses and wash him in the river after giving him something to eat and drink.  So the maids give him the little gold cruse of oil and tell him to go and wash himself, and as they seem to have completely recovered from their alarm, Ulysses is compelled to say, “Young ladies, please stand a little on one side, that I may wash the brine from off my shoulders and anoint myself with oil; for it is long enough since my skin has had a drop of oil upon it.  I cannot wash as long as you keep standing there.  I have no clothes on, and it makes me very uncomfortable.”