For a long time Paris remained at the court of Sparta treated with a courtesy and respect which he did not deserve, because during all that time Venus was enchanting Helen until she was able to think of no one save the comely youth, Paris. After awhile King Menelaus was obliged to take a long journey and in his absence Paris persuaded Helen to forsake Sparta and set sail with him for Troy. When these two were discovered in their treachery, the heroes were fired with anger and remembered their pledge to go to King Menelaus' aid if any deep wrong was done to him. Their wrath was not so much directed against Helen, whom they believed to be under the dread spell which Venus had cast upon her, as against Paris who had so violated their hospitality. It was decided that preparations for war must be immediately begun and men were pressed into service everywhere gathering supplies and building ships. Agamemnon, who was a brother of King Menelaus and mighty in battle, was appointed to be the leader of the Greek army, and then began the work of finding the best men to help him in carrying on the great enterprise that was to be directed against Troy. The heroes were as true and of as high courage then as they are to-day, but the adventure of the war was to be directed against a foreign shore and certain of the Greeks found that it tore their hearts to leave their own country, and in the cause of a wilful youth and a fair woman. One among these was Ulysses, the king of Ithaca. Ulysses was content and happy in his peaceful kingdom and the love of his industrious queen, Penelope, and his baby son, Telemachus. We must not commit Ulysses to the sin of cowardice because he did not want to enlist for the Trojan war. There have been heroes like him in all time, destined to be the greatest warriors of all, when they overcame their fears and took swords in their hands in the cause of right. But at first Ulysses pretended that he had lost his reason. He borrowed a plough from a farmer and drove it up and down the seashore, sowing salt in the furrows that he made. Ulysses was pursuing this mad occupation when a messenger of Agamemnon came to demand his services in the army of the Greeks. The messenger could not believe his eyes, and to test Ulysses he grasped the king's little son and laid him on the sand in the direct path of the plough-share. Ulysses dropped the plough handles and lifted the baby Telemachus to his heart, so his game of madness was over. He bade his kingdom and Penelope farewell, and set out to join the heroes. He was to be one of the bravest of them all, and doomed not to see his own land again for twenty years.