door,” said the host, “Alcides in his triumph stooped to
enter; this mansion contained his presence. Nerve yourself,
my guest, to look down on riches, and make your
own soul, like his, such as a god would not disdain, and
take in no churlish sort the welcome of poverty.” He 35
said, and beneath the slope of his narrow roof ushered in
the great Æneas, and laid him to rest on a couch of leaves
and the skin of a Libyan bear.
Down comes the night, and flaps her sable wings over
the earth. But Venus, distracted, and not idly, with a