tarting home again, Minerva thought it was
time Ulysses should wake up and see the handsome girl who was to
take him to the city of the Phaeacians. So the princess threw a
ball at one of the maids, which missed the maid and fell into the
water. On this they all shouted, and the noise they made woke up
Ulysses, who sat up in his bed of leaves and wondered where in the
world he could have got to.

"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