She ceased. He all the while, at Jove’s command, was 15 keeping his eyes unmoved, and shutting up in his heart his great love. At length he answers in brief:—“Fair queen, name all the claims to gratitude you can, I shall never gainsay one, nor will the thought of Elissa[178] ever be unwelcome while memory lasts, while breath animates this 20 frame. A few words I will say, as the case admits. I never counted—do not dream it—on stealthily concealing my flight. I never came with a bridegroom’s torch in my hand, nor was this the alliance to which I agreed. For me, were the Fates to suffer me to live under a star 25 of my own choosing, and to make with care the terms I would, the city of Troy, first of all the dear remains of what was mine, would claim my tendance. Priam’s tall roof-tree would still be standing, and my hand would have built a restored Pergamus, to solace the vanquished. But 30 now to princely Italy Grynean[179] Apollo, to Italy his Lycian oracles bid me repair. There is my heart, there my fatherland. If you are riveted here by the sight of your stately Carthage, a daughter of Phœnicia by a Libyan town, why, I would ask, should jealousy forbid Teucrians to 35 settle in Ausonian land? We, like you, have the right of looking for a foreign realm. There is my father Anchises, oft as night’s dewy shades invest the earth, oft as the fiery stars arise, warning me in dreams and appalling me by his troubled presence. There is my son Ascanius, and the wrongs heaped on his dear head every day that I rob him of the crown of Hesperia, and of the land that fate makes his. Now, too, the messenger of the gods, sent down from 5 Jove himself (I swear by both our lives) has brought me orders through the flying air. With my own eyes I saw the god in clear daylight entering the walls, and took in his words with the ears that hear you now. Cease then to harrow up both our souls by your reproaches: my quest 10 of Italy is not of my own motion.”