n 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.

XIII

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