“I was not there,” answered Euryclea, “and do not know; I only heard them groaning while they were being killed.  We sat crouching and huddled up in a corner of the women’s room with the doors closed, till your son came to fetch me because his father sent him.  Then I found Ulysses standing over the corpses that were lying on the ground all round him, one on top of the other.  You would have enjoyed it if you could have seen him standing there all bespattered with blood and filth, and looking just like a lion.  But the corpses are now all piled up in the gatehouse that is in the outer court, and Ulysses has lit a great fire to purify the house with sulphur.  He has sent me to call you, so come with me that you may both be happy together after all; for now at last the desire of your heart has been fulfilled; your husband is come home to find both wife and son alive and well, and to take his revenge in his own house on the suitors who behaved so badly to him.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “do not exult too confidently over all this.  You know how delighted every one would be to see Ulysses come home—­more particularly myself, and the son who has been born to both of us; but what you tell me cannot be really true.  It is some god who is angry with the suitors for their great wickedness, and has made an end of them; for they respected no man in the whole world, neither rich nor poor, who came near them, and they have come to a bad end in consequence of their iniquity; Ulysses is dead far away from the Achaean land; he will never return home again.”

Then nurse Euryclea said, “My child, what are you talking about? but you were all hard of belief and have made up your mind that your husband is never coming, although he is in the house and by his own fire side at this very moment.  Besides I can give you another proof; when I was washing him I perceived the scar which the wild boar gave him, and I wanted to tell you about it, but in his wisdom he would not let me, and clapped his hands over my mouth; so come with me and I will make this bargain with you—­if I am deceiving you, you may have me killed by the most cruel death you can think of.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “however wise you may be you can hardly fathom the counsels of the gods.  Nevertheless, we will go in search of my son, that I may see the corpses of the suitors, and the man who has killed them.”

On this she came down from her upper room, and while doing so she considered whether she should keep at a distance from her husband and question him, or whether she should at once go up to him and embrace him.  When, however, she had crossed the stone floor of the cloister, she sat down opposite Ulysses by the fire, against the wall at right angles {180} [to that by which she had entered], while Ulysses sat near one of the bearing-posts, looking upon the ground, and waiting to see what his brave wife would say to him when she saw him.  For a long time she sat silent and as one lost in amazement.  At one moment she looked him full in the face, but then again directly, she was misled by his shabby clothes and failed to recognise him, {181} till Telemachus began to reproach her and said: