“Old man,” answered Eumaeus, “I see thy bent.  Thou wouldst forge some glozing tale to beguile the ears of that poor stricken lady, Penelope.  Many a beggar has come to her doors crammed full of lies to amuse her widowed heart; and she listens, and doubts, and weeps.  And thou too, methinks, hast a like fertile fancy; for hunger and want are rare inventors.  But save thy wits for a better purpose; thou canst not bring him back to life, or clothe with warm flesh his bones, long since picked clean by carrion birds or ravenous fish.  He is lost for ever, and sorrow is the portion of us who remain, but especially of me, for he was dearer to me than father and mother, dearer than my native land.”

“Friend,” said Odysseus, “thou hast misjudged me sorely, in thinking me one of those greedy mendicants who tell lies for the sake of meat and drink.  Believe me or not, I will say what is in my heart, and when my words are proved true by the event I will claim my reward.  Odysseus is near at hand, and ere many days have passed he shall be seen in Ithaca, and take vengeance on those who oppress his wife and son.  I swear it by this table at which I have eaten, and by the hearth of Odysseus, and by Zeus, the god of hospitality.”

Eumaeus remained totally unconvinced by this solemn assertion.  “Talk no more of him,” he said with emotion, “it cuts me to the heart to hear his very name.  Would that it might be as thou sayest!—­but ’tis an idle dream.  Peace be unto his ashes!  And may the gods at least preserve unto us his son, Telemachus, who lately departed on a witless errand, led thereto, as I think, by some malign deity who hates the house of Odysseus.  But no more of this!  Tell me rather of thyself, who and whence thou art, and how thou camest to Ithaca.”

Eumaeus had not extolled the fertile invention of Odysseus for nothing.  Forthwith he began a wondrous tale of adventure, a little epic in itself, with some points of resemblance to his own true story.  “I am a native of Crete,” he began, “and the son of a wealthy man.  When my father died I received but a scanty portion of his goods.  Nevertheless, because of my valour and the might of my hands, I won a noble and wealthy lady for my wife.  Thou wouldst not deem, perhaps, to see me now, that I was once a mighty man of war; yet even in the stubble we may judge what the wheat has been.  From my youth up I lived amidst the clash of shield and spear, and loved battle and ambush, siege and foray.  But I cared not for plodding industry, which gives increase unto a house, and fills it with the bright faces of children.  Such I was as Heaven made me, a man of war and blood.