went away and prayed to the Gods, while the prince went down
to the public square and found Theoclymenus and brought him back to the
palace, and they sat down together in the hall. Then one of the old
servants brought up a polished table and spread it for them with good
things for their meal, and Penelope came and sat beside the door, spinning
her fine soft yarn. She did not speak till they had finished, but then she
said to her son, "Telemachus, I see I must go up to my room and lie down
on my bed, the bed I have watered with my tears ever since Ulysses went
away to Troy; for you are determined not to talk to me and tell me the
news of your father before the suitors come into the hall!"

Then Telemachus said, "Mother, I will tell you all I know. We reached
Pylos and found Nestor there, and he took me into his splendid house, and
welcomed me as lovingly as though I had been a long-lost son of his own.
But he could tell me nothing of my father, not even if he were alive or
dead, and so he sent me on to Sparta, to the house of Menelaus. There I
saw Helen, the fairest of women, for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought
and suffered so long. Menelaus asked me why I came and I told him about
the suitors and all the wrong they did. Then he cried, 'Curse on them! The
dastards in the hero's place! Oh, that Ulysses would return! They would
soon have cause enough to hate this suit of theirs!' And then he told me
how he had heard tidings of my father from Proteus, the wizard of the sea.
He was living still, so the wizard said, on an island far away, in the
cave of a wood nymph called Calypso, who kept him there against his will,
and he had no ship to carry him over the broad sea. That was all Menelaus
could tell me; and when I had done my errand I came away, and the Gods
have brought me home in safety."

And as Penelope listened her heart filled with sorrow; but Theoclymenus,
the seer, said to her, "Listen to me, wife of Ulysses, and I will prophesy
to you; for your son has heard nothing certain, but I have seen omens that
are sure. I swear by Zeus, the ruler of the Gods, and by the board and the
hearth of Ulysses himself where I am standing now, he is already here in
Ithaca, he knows of all this wickedness, and is waiting to punish the
suitors as they deserve."

At that moment the princes came in from their sport and flung their cloaks
aside, and set about slaughtering the sheep and the fatted goats and the
swine for their feast.