r Penelope hears of the daring act of her boy, done without
her consent or knowledge. The news is brought to her, just as she is
recounting the goodness of Ulysses and the wrongs of the Suitors. This
new misfortune, for so it seemed to her, is quite too great a burden to
bear; she breaks out into lamentations find recites her woes: a husband
lost and now a son in the greatest danger. But she is to get both human
and divine consolation. Eurycleia, the old nurse, confesses to her part
in the affair, and advises the queen "to put on fresh garments and to
pray to Pallas, ascending to the upper chamber."

Pallas sends to the distressed mother a refreshing sleep and a
consoling dream, which we may consider to have been suggested by the
words of Eurycleia. Her sister who dwelt far away, appears to her and
says that her son, guided by Pallas, will surely return. Doubtless we
see here an expression of the deepest instinct of Penelope; the outer
suggestion of the nurse and her own unconscious faith fuse together and
form the phantom and give to the same an utterance. The youth who can
plan and carry out such an expedition will probably be able to take
care of himself. Penelope of course has some doubt, since the good
Ulysses has had to suffer so much from the Gods. About him, too, she
will know and so inquires of the phantom. Doth he live? But the shadowy
image can tell nothing, the act of Ulysses lies not in its field of
vision, it declines to speak further and vanishes.

Thus Telemachus has broken through the two restraints which held him in
bondage at his Ithacan home, both keeping down his manly endeavor. The
first comes from the Suitors and is the restraint of hate, which would
give him no opportunity in the world of action, and in addition is
destroying his possessions. The second restraint springs from love, and
yet is injurious. The solicitude of the mother keeps him back from
every enterprise; having lost her husband, as she deems, by his too
adventuresome spirit, she is afraid of losing her boy for the same
reason, and is in danger of losing him anyhow, by making him a cipher.
Such are the two obstacles in Ithaca which Telemachus is shown
surmounting and asserting therein his freedom and manhood. The whole is
a flash of his father's mettle, he is already the unconscious Ulysses;
no wonder that he inquires after his parent in Pylos and Sparta. The
poet will now carry him forward to the point where he will actually
meet