THESEUS
(Continued from page 1174)
mother's adventure with the bull, but according to my mother he simply
remarked 'Here I have some difficulty in following you.' 'What's done
is done, and nothing can undo it,' he added. When it comes to us, he'll
do the same. At the most, he'll banish you from the court-and a lot
of difference that'll make! Wherever you go, I shall follow."
That remains to be seen, I thought to myself.
Mter we had taken a light breakfast, I asked her to be kind enough
to lead me to Daedalus, and added that I wished to speak to him pri–
vately and alone. She only agreed to this after I had sworn by Poseidon
that immediately our talk was over I would rejoin her at the palace.
VII
Daedalus rose to welcome me. I had found
him
in a dim-lit room,
bending over the tablets and working-drawings which were spread before
him, and surrounded by a great many peculiar instruments. He was very
tall, and perfectly erect
in
spite of his great age. His beard was silvery
in
color, and even longer than that of Minos, which was still quite black,
or the fairer one of Rhadamanthus. His vast forehead was marked by
deep wrinkles across the whole of its width. When he looked downwards,
his eyes were half-hidden by the overhanging brushwood of his eyebrows.
He spoke slowly, and in a deep voice. His silences had the quality of
thought.
He began by congratulating me on my prowess. The echo of
this, he said, had penetrated even to him, who lived
in
retirement,
remote from the tumult of the world. He added that I looked to him
to be something of a booby; that he took little account of feats of arms,
and did not consider that physical strength was the godhead of man.
"At one time I saw quite a lot of your predecessor, Hercules. He
was a stupid man, and I could never get anything out of him, except
heroics. But what I did appreciate in him, and what I appreciate in
you, is a sort of absorption in the task in hand, an unrecoiling audacity,
a temerity even, which thrusts you forward and destroys your opponent,
after first having destroyed the coward whom each of us carries within
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