ng town.
The gods, who have care of strangers, will requite you for these
courtesies."

She admiring to hear such complimentary words proceed out of the mouth
of one whose outside looked so rough and unpromising, made answer:
"Stranger, I discern neither sloth nor folly in you, and yet I see
that you are poor and wretched: from which I gather that neither
wisdom nor industry can secure felicity; only Jove bestows it upon
whomsoever he pleases. He perhaps has reduced you to this plight.
However, since your wanderings have brought you so near to our city,
it lies in our duty to supply your wants. Clothes and what else
a human hand should give to one so suppliant, and so tamed with
calamity, you shall not want. We will shew you our city and tell you
the name of our people. This is the land of the Phaeacians, of which my
father Alcinous is king."

Then calling her attendants who had dispersed on the first sight of
Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear, and said: "This man is no
Cyclop, nor monster of sea or land, that you should fear him; but he
seems manly, staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward
appearance, yet he has the mind's riches, wit and fortitude, in
abundance. Show him the cisterns where he may wash him from the
sea-weeds and foam that hang about him, and let him have garments that
fit him out of those which we have brought with us to the cisterns."

Ulysses retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in the cisterns
from the soil and impurities with which the rocks and waves had
covered all his body, and clothing himself with befitting raiment,
which the princess's attendants had given him, he presented himself
in more worthy shape to Nausicaa. She admired to see what a comely
personage he was, now he was dressed in all parts; she thought him
some king or hero: and secretly wished that the gods would be pleased
to give her such a husband.

Then causing her attendants to yoke her mules, and lay up the
vestments, which the sun's heat had sufficiently dried, in the coach,
she ascended with her maids, and drove off to the palace; bidding
Ulysses, as she departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it
on foot at some distance: which she did, because if she had suffered
him to have rode in the coach with her, it might have subjected her to
some misconstructions of the common people, who are always ready to
vilify and censure their betters, and to suspect that charity is not
always pure