o] all that asked Telemachus made reply, that he
had caused them to be taken down to cleanse them of the rust and of
the stain which they had contracted by lying so long unused, even ever
since his father went for Troy; and with that answer their minds were
easily satisfied. So to their feasting and vain rioting again they
fell. Ulysses by Telemachus's order had a seat and a mess assigned him
in the door-way, and he had his eye ever on the lances. And it moved
gall in some of the great ones there present, to have their feast
still dulled with the society of that wretched beggar as they deemed
him, and they reviled and spurned at him with their feet. Only there
was one Philaetius, who had something a better nature than the rest,
that spake kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He coming up
to Ulysses, took him by the hand with a kind of fear, as if touched
exceedingly with imagination of his great worth, and said thus to him,
"Hail! father stranger! my brows have sweat to see the injuries which
you have received, and my eyes have broke forth in tears, when I have
only thought that such being oftentimes the lot of worthiest men, to
this plight Ulysses may be reduced, and that he now may wander from
place to place as you do; for such who are compelled by need to range
here and there, and have no firm home to fix their feet upon, God
keeps them in this earth, as under water; so are they kept down and
depressed. And a dark thread is sometimes spun in the fates of kings."

At this bare likening of the beggar to Ulysses, Minerva from heaven
made the suitors for foolish joy to go mad, and roused them to such a
laughter as would never stop, they laughed without power of ceasing,
their eyes stood full of tears for violent joys; but fears and
horrible misgivings succeeded: and one among them stood up and
prophesied: "Ah, wretches!" he said, "what madness from heaven has
seized you, that you can laugh? see you not that your meat drops
blood? a night, like the night of death, wraps you about, you shriek
without knowing it; your eyes thrust forth tears; the fixed walls, and
the beam that bears the whole house up, fall blood; ghosts choak up
the entry; full is the hall with apparitions, of murdered men; under
your feet is hell; the sun falls from heaven and it is midnight at
noon." But like men whom the gods had infatuated to their destruction,
they mocked at his fears, and Eurymachus said, "This man is surely
mad, conduct him fo