“Remember,” said Eurylochus, “that it was a young maiden who beguiled three of our friends into the palace of the king of the Laestrygons, who ate up one of them in the twinkling of an eye.”

No warning or persuasion, however, had any effect on his companions.  They went up to a pair of folding-doors at the farther end of the hall, and, throwing them wide open, passed into the next room.  Eurylochus, meanwhile, had stepped behind a pillar.  In the short moment while the folding-doors opened and closed again, he caught a glimpse of a very beautiful woman rising from the loom and coming to meet the poor weather-beaten wanderers, with a hospitable smile and her hand stretched out in welcome.  There were four other young women, who joined their hands and danced merrily forward, making gestures of obeisance to the strangers.  They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress.  Yet Eurylochus fancied that one of them had sea-green hair, and that the close-fitting bodice of a second looked like the bark of a tree, and that both the others had something odd in their aspect, although he could not quite determine what it was, in the little while that he had to examine them.

The folding-doors swung quickly back, and left him standing behind the pillar, in the solitude of the outer hall.  There Eurylochus waited until he was quite weary, and listened eagerly to every sound, but without hearing anything that could help him to guess what had become of his friends.  Footsteps, it is true, seemed to be passing and repassing in other parts of the palace.  Then there was a clatter of silver dishes, or golden ones, which made him imagine a rich feast in a splendid banqueting-hall.  But by and by he heard a tremendous grunting and squealing, and then a sudden scampering, like that of small, hard hoofs over a marble floor, while the voices of the mistress and her four handmaidens were screaming all together, in tones of anger and derision.  Eurylochus could not conceive what had happened, unless a drove of swine had broken into the palace, attracted by the smell of the feast.  Chancing to cast his eyes at the fountain, he saw that it did not shift its shape, as formerly, nor looked either like a long-robed man, or a lion, a tiger, a wolf, or an ass.  It looked like nothing but a hog, which lay wallowing in the marble basin, and filled it from brim to brim.

But we must leave the prudent Eurylochus waiting in the outer hall, and follow his friends into the inner secrecy of the palace.  As soon as the beautiful woman saw them, she arose from the loom, as I have told you, and came forward, smiling, and stretching out her hand.  She took the hand of the foremost among them, and bade him and the whole party welcome.

“You have been long expected, my good friends,” said she.  “I and my maidens are well acquainted with you, although you do not appear to recognize us.  Look at this piece of tapestry, and judge if your faces must not have been familiar to us.”