Thus OEnone spoke, and went within the cave, where she threw herself down among the ashes of the hearth and sobbed for anger and sorrow.  In a little while she rose and went to the door of the cave, thinking that Paris had not been borne away back to Troy, but she found him not; for his bearers had carried him by another path, till he died beneath the boughs of the oak trees.  Then his bearers carried him swiftly down to Troy, where his mother bewailed him, and Helen sang over him as she had sung over Hector, remembering many things, and fearing to think of what her own end might be.  But the Trojans hastily built a great pile of dry wood, and thereon laid the body of Paris and set fire to it, and the flame went up through the darkness, for now night had fallen.

But OEnone was roaming in the dark woods, crying and calling after Paris, like a lioness whose cubs the hunters have carried away.  The moon rose to give her light, and the flame of the funeral fire shone against the sky, and then OEnone knew that Paris had died—­beautiful Paris—­and that the Trojans were burning his body on the plain at the foot of Mount Ida.  Then she cried that now Paris was all her own, and that Helen had no more hold on him:  “And though when he was living he left me, in death we shall not be divided,” she said, and she sped down the hill, and through the thickets where the wood nymphs were wailing for Paris, and she reached the plain, and, covering her head with her veil like a bride, she rushed through the throng of Trojans.  She leaped upon the burning pile of wood, she clasped the body of Paris in her arms, and the flame of fire consumed the bridegroom and the bride, and their ashes mingled.  No man could divide them any more, and the ashes were placed in a golden cup, within a chamber of stone, and the earth was mounded above them.  On that grave the wood nymphs planted two rose trees, and their branches met and plaited together.

This was the end of Paris and OEnone.

HOW ULYSSES INVENTED THE DEVICE OF THE HORSE OF TREE

After Paris died, Helen was not given back to Menelaus.  We are often told that only fear of the anger of Paris had prevented the Trojans from surrendering Helen and making peace.  Now Paris could not terrify them, yet for all that the men of the town would not part with Helen, whether because she was so beautiful, or because they thought it dishonourable to yield her to the Greeks, who might put her to a cruel death.  So Helen was taken by Deiphobus, the brother of Paris, to live in his own house, and Deiphobus was at this time the best warrior and the chief captain of the men of Troy.