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 charity, but that
love or some sinister intention lies hid under its disguise. So discreet
and attentive to appearance in all her actions was this admirable
princess.

Ulysses as he entered the city wondered to see its magnificence, its
markets, buildings, temples; its walls and rampires; its trade, and resort
of men; its harbours for shipping, which is the strength of the Phaeacian
state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld its riches, the
proportion of its architecture, its avenues, gardens, statues, fountains,
he stood rapt in admiration, and almost forgot his own condition in
surveying the flourishing estate of others; but recollecting himself, he
passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the king and queen were
sitting at dinner with their peers, Nausicaa having prepared them for his
approach.

To them humbly kneeling, he made it his request that, since fortune had
cast him naked upon their shores, they would take him into their
protection, and grant him a conveyance by one of the ships of which their
great Phaeacian state had such good store, to carry him to his own
country. Having delivered his request, to grace it with more humility he
went and sat himself down upon the hearth among the ashes, as the custom