wakened me with such
a silly story; but you are old: go back to the women's working room.'
The good nurse answered: 'Indeed, I tell you no silly tale. Indeed he is
in the hall; he is that poor guest whom all men struck and insulted, but
Telemachus knew his father.'

Then Penelope leaped up gladly, and kissed the nurse, but yet she was
not sure that her husband had come, she feared that it might be some God
disguised as a man, or some evil man pretending to be Ulysses. 'Surely
Ulysses has met his death far away,' she said, and though Eurycleia
vowed that she herself had seen the scar dealt by the boar, long ago,
she would not be convinced. 'None the less,' she said, 'let us go and
see my son, and the wooers lying dead, and the man who slew them.' So
they went down the stairs and along a gallery on the ground floor that
led into the courtyard, and so entered the door of the hall, and crossed
the high stone threshold on which Ulysses stood when he shot down
Antinous. Penelope went up to the hearth and sat opposite Ulysses, who
was leaning against one of the four tall pillars that supported the
roof; there she sat and gazed at him, still wearing his rags, and still
not cleansed from the blood of battle. She did not know him, and was
silent, though Telemachus called her hard of belief and cold of heart.

'My child,' she said, 'I am bewildered, and can hardly speak, but if
this man is Ulysses, he knows things unknown to any except him and me.'
Then Ulysses bade Telemachus go to the baths and wash, and put on fresh
garments, and bade the maidens bring the minstrel to play music, while
they danced in the hall. In the town the friends and kinsfolk of the
wooers did not know that they were dead, and when they heard the music
they would not guess that anything strange had happened. It was
necessary that nobody should know, for, if the kinsfolk of the dead men
learned the truth, they would seek to take revenge, and might burn down
the house. Indeed, Ulysses was still in great danger, for the law was
that the brothers and cousins of slain men must slay their slayers, and
the dead were many, and had many clansmen.

Now Eurynome bathed Ulysses himself, and anointed him with oil, and clad
him in new raiment, so that he looked like himself again, full of
strength and beauty. He sat down on his own high seat beside the fire,
and said: 'Lady, you are the fairest and most cruel Queen alive. No
other woman would harden her heart against h