to undertake to drive them away, they would
pillage the house, kill her boy, and certainly carry her off. They have
the power, they have the inclination; they are held by one small thread
in the weak hands of a woman, but with that thread she snares them all,
to the last man. Love it may be called, of a certain sort; we see how
Antinous admires her, though conscious that she has made a fool of him
and his fellows. Each hopes to win the prize yet, and she feeds them
with hope, "sending private messages to each man;" thus she turns every
one of them against the other, and prevents concerted action which
looks to violence. That wonderful female gift is hers, the gift of
making each of her hundred Suitors think that just he is the favored
one, only let it be kept secret now till the right time comes!

But Penelope uses this gift as a weapon, it is her means of saving the
House of Ulysses, while many another fair lady uses it for the fun of
the thing. Is she right? Does her end justify her means? True she is in
the highest degree to Family and State, is saving both; but she does
dissemble, does cajole the suitors. One boy, one woman, one old man in
the country constitute the present strength of the House of Ulysses;
but craft meets violence and undoes it, as always.

And yet we may grant something to the other side of her character. She
takes pleasure in the exercise of her gift, who does not? Inasmuch as
the Suitors are here, and not to be dismissed, she will get a certain
gratification out of their suit. A little dash of coquetry, a little
love of admiration we may discern peeping through her adamantine
fidelity to her husband, recollect after an absence of twenty years. As
all this homage was thrust upon her, she seeks to win from it a kind of
satisfaction; the admiration of a hundred men she tries to receive
without making a sour face. Still further she takes pleasure in the
exercise of that feminine subtlety which holds them fast in the web,
yet keeps them off; giving them always hope, but indefinitely extending
it. Verily that web which she wove is the web of Fate for the Suitors.
So much for Penelope at present, whom we shall meet again.

To this demand of Antinous to send the mother away, Telemachus makes a
noble, yes, a heroic response. It would be wrong all around, wrong to
the mother, wrong to her father, unless he (Telemachus) restored the
dower, wrong to the Gods; vengeance from the Erinyes, and nemesis from
m