“Lady, a heart impenetrable beyond the sex of women the dwellers on Olympus gave to you.  There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, comes in the twentieth year home to his native land.  Come, then, good nurse, and make my bed, that I may lie alone.  For certainly of iron is the heart within her breast.”

Then said to him heedful Penelope, “Nay, sir, I am not proud, nor contemptuous of you, nor too much dazed with wonder.  I very well remember what you were when you went upon your long-oared ship away from Ithaca.  However, Eurycleia, make up his massive bed outside that stately chamber which he himself once built.  Move the massive frame out there, and throw the bedding on,—­the fleeces, robes, and bright-hued rugs.”

She said this in the hope to prove her husband, but Ulysses spoke in anger to his faithful wife:  “Woman, these are bitter words which you have said!  Who set my bed elsewhere?  A hard task that would be for one, however skilled,—­unless a god should come and by his will set it with ease upon some other spot; but among men no living being, even in his prime, could lightly shift it; for a great token is inwrought into its curious frame.  I built it; no one else.  There grew a thick-leaved olive shrub inside the yard, full-grown and vigorous, in girth much like a pillar.  Round this I formed my chamber, and I worked till it was done, building it out of close-set stones, and roofing it over well.  Framed and tight-fitting doors I added to it.  Then I lopped the thick-leaved olive’s crest, cutting the stem high up above the roots, neatly and skillfully smoothed with my axe the sides, and to the line I kept all true to shape my post, and with an auger I bored it all along.  Starting with this, I fashioned me the bed till it was finished, and I inlaid it well with gold, with silver, and with ivory.  On it I stretched a thong of ox-hide, gay with purple.  This is the token I now tell.  I do not know whether the bed still stands there, wife, or whether somebody has set it elsewhere, cutting the olive trunk.”

As he spoke thus, her knees grew feeble and her very soul, when she recognized the tokens which Ulysses exactly told.  Then bursting into tears, she ran straight toward him, threw her arms round Ulysses’ neck and kissed his face, and said,—­

“Ulysses, do not scorn me!  Ever before, you were the wisest of mankind.  The Gods have sent us sorrow, and grudged our staying side by side to share the joys of youth and reach the threshold of old age.  But do not be angry with me now, nor take it ill that then when I first saw you I did not greet you thus; for the heart within my breast was always trembling.  I feared some man might come and cheat me with his tale.  Many a man makes wicked schemes for gain.  Nay, Argive Helen, the daughter of Zeus, would not have given herself to love a stranger if she had known how warrior sons of the Achaians would bring her home again, back to