"It must depend upon your own future behavior," added Ulysses, "whether you do not find your way back to the sty."
At this moment the note of a bird sounded from the branch of a neighboring tree.
"Peep, peep, pe—weep—ep!"
It was the purple bird who, all this while, had been sitting over their heads, watching what was going forward, and hoping that Ulysses would remember how he had done his utmost to keep him and his followers out of harm's way. Ulysses ordered Circe instantly to make a king of this good little fowl, and leave him exactly as she found him. Hardly were the words spoken, and before the bird had time to utter another "Pe—weep," King Picus leaped down from the bough of the tree, as majestic a sovereign as any in the world, dressed in a long purple robe and gorgeous yellow stockings, with a splendidly wrought collar about his neck and a golden crown upon his head. He and King Ulysses exchanged with one another the courtesies which belong to their elevated rank. But from that time forth, King Picus was no longer proud of his crown and his trappings of royalty, nor of the fact of his being a king; he felt himself merely the upper servant of his people, and that it must be his lifelong labor to make them better and happier.
As for the lions, tigers, and wolves (though Circe would have restored them to their former shapes at his slightest word), Ulysses thought it advisable that they should remain as they now were, and thus give warning of their cruel dispositions, instead of going about under the guise of men and pretending to human sympathies, while their hearts had the blood-thirstiness of wild beasts. So he let them howl as much as they liked, but never troubled his head about them. And when everything was settled according to his pleasure, he sent to summon the remainder of his comrades, whom he had left at the sea-shore. These being arrived, with the prudent Eurylochus at their head, they all made themselves comfortable in Circe's enchanted palace until quite rested and refreshed from the toils and hardships of their voyage.
ULYSSES AND THE CYCLOPS
BY HOPE MONCRIEFF
Many a year did the much-enduring Ulysses sail unknown seas, on his way back from Troy to Ithaca, his island home. Beset by such mishaps and enchantments that for long he seemed little like to see again his faithful wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, he escaped from one perilous adventure after another, but none more fearsome than when he came to the smoking mountain-land of the Cyclopes. So were named a cruel race of one-eyed giants, wild as the rocky heights on which they fed their flocks of sheep and goats, knowing not to plant corn or fruit, and holding no commerce with kindly men, nor reverencing the lords of heaven.