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 with care and overborne with sleep, was in the hold of our ill-starred bridal chamber, weighed down as I lay, by slumber sweet and sound, the very image of the deep calm of death. Meantime, my peerless helpmate removes from the house arms of every sort: yes, my trusty sword     5 she had withdrawn from my pillow, and now she calls Menelaus to come in, and throws wide the door, hoping, I doubt not, that the greatness of the boon would soften her lover's heart, and that the memory of her crime of old could thus be wiped from men's minds. Why make     10 the story long? They burst into the chamber, along with them that child of Æolus,[o] then as ever the counsellor of evil. Recompense, ye gods, the Greeks in kind, if these lips, that ask for retribution, are pure and loyal. But you; what chance has brought you here in your lifetime,     15 let me ask in turn? Are you come under the spell of ocean-wandering, or by the command of heaven? or what tyranny of fortune constrains you to visit these sad, sunless dwellings, the abode of confusion?"

In this interchange of talk, the Dawn-goddess in her     20 flushing car, careering through the sky, had well passed the summit of the arch; and perchance they had spent all their allotted time in converse like this, had not the Sibyl warned her companion with brief address; "Night is hastening, Æneas; and we, as we weep, are making     25 hours pass. This is the spot where the road parts in twain. The right, which goes under the palace-wall of mighty Dis—there lies our way to Elysium; the left puts in motion the tortures of the wicked, and sends them to Tartarus, the home of crime." Deiphobus replied:     30 "Frown not, dread priestess; I depart, to make the ghostly number complete, and plunge again in darkness. Go on your way, our nation's glory, go: may your experience of fate be more blest." He said, and, while yet speaking, turned away. 35

Suddenly, Æneas looks back, and, under a rock on the left, sees a broad stronghold, girt by a triple wall; a fierce stream surrounds it with surges of fire, Tartarean Phlege