So Penelope went away and prayed to the Gods, while the prince went down to the public square and found Theoclymenus and brought him back to the palace, and they sat down together in the hall.  Then one of the old servants brought up a polished table and spread it for them with good things for their meal, and Penelope came and sat beside the door, spinning her fine soft yarn.  She did not speak till they had finished, but then she said to her son, “Telemachus, I see I must go up to my room and lie down on my bed, the bed I have watered with my tears ever since Ulysses went away to Troy; for you are determined not to talk to me and tell me the news of your father before the suitors come into the hall!”

Then Telemachus said, “Mother, I will tell you all I know.  We reached Pylos and found Nestor there, and he took me into his splendid house, and welcomed me as lovingly as though I had been a long-lost son of his own.  But he could tell me nothing of my father, not even if he were alive or dead, and so he sent me on to Sparta, to the house of Menelaus.  There I saw Helen, the fairest of women, for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought and suffered so long.  Menelaus asked me why I came and I told him about the suitors and all the wrong they did.  Then he cried, ’Curse on them!  The dastards in the hero’s place!  Oh, that Ulysses would return!  They would soon have cause enough to hate this suit of theirs!’ And then he told me how he had heard tidings of my father from Proteus, the wizard of the sea.  He was living still, so the wizard said, on an island far away, in the cave of a wood nymph called Calypso, who kept him there against his will, and he had no ship to carry him over the broad sea.  That was all Menelaus could tell me; and when I had done my errand I came away, and the Gods have brought me home in safety.”

And as Penelope listened her heart filled with sorrow; but Theoclymenus, the seer, said to her, “Listen to me, wife of Ulysses, and I will prophesy to you; for your son has heard nothing certain, but I have seen omens that are sure.  I swear by Zeus, the ruler of the Gods, and by the board and the hearth of Ulysses himself where I am standing now, he is already here in Ithaca, he knows of all this wickedness, and is waiting to punish the suitors as they deserve.”

At that moment the princes came in from their sport and flung their cloaks aside, and set about slaughtering the sheep and the fatted goats and the swine for their feast.

Meanwhile Ulysses was starting for the town, with the swineherd to show him the way.  He had slung the tattered wallet across his shoulder, and Eumaeus had given him a staff, and every one who met them would have taken the king for a poor old beggar-man, hobbling along with his crutch.

So they went down the rocky path till they reached a running spring by the wayside where the townsfolk got their water.  There was a grove of tall poplars round it, and the cool stream bubbled down from the rock overhead, and above the fountain there was an altar to the nymphs where the passers-by laid their offerings.