"Do you understand now how every one of us can claim to be a son of great Prometheus?"
ADVENTURE XVII.
A CAUSE OF WAR.
Time passed.
Menelaus had returned from Ilios, bringing with him the bones of his countrymen who had died in that distant land. The great plague had been stayed, for the anger of Apollo had been assuaged. And it had seemed for a time that the old days of peace and plenty had come again to Lacedæmon, never to depart.
Yet within a few weeks all was changed once more. There was silence in the golden halls of Menelaus, and guests sat no longer as of yore around the banquet tables. Anger and grief and uneasiness were plainly seen in every face. Men gathered in the streets, and talked in wild, excited tones about the strange things which had lately happened in Lacedæmon; and the words "Helen," and "Paris," and "Troy," and "Ilios" seemed to be on every tongue, and repeated with every sign of love and hatred, of admiration and anxiety.
"Our good king, by his visit to Ilios, lifted the scourge of pestilence and famine from our land," said one of the elders of the city; "but he brought to our shores a greater evil,--even Paris, the handsome prince of Troy. And now the glory of our country, the sun which delighted all hearts, the peerless Helen, has been stolen by the perfidious one, and carried to his home beyond the sea."
"And do you think there will be war?" asked a long-haired soldier, toying with the short dagger in his belt.
"How can it be otherwise?" answered the elder. "When Menelaus won peerless Helen for his wife, the noblest princes of Hellas promised with solemn oaths that they would aid him against any one who should try either by guile or by force to take her from him. Let the word be carried from city to city, and all Hellas will soon be in arms. The king, with his brother Agamemnon, has even now crossed over to Pylos to take counsel with old Nestor, the wisest of men. When he comes back to Lacedæmon, you may expect to see the watch-fires blazing on the mountain-tops."
"No sight would be more welcome," answered the soldier.