Then wise Penelope answered her:  ’Dear nurse, the gods have made thee distraught, the gods that can make foolish even the wisdom of the wise, and that stablish the simple in understanding.  They it is that have marred thy reason, though heretofore thou hadst a prudent heart.  Why dost thou mock me, who have a spirit full of sorrow, to speak these wild words, and rousest me out of sweet slumber, that had bound me and overshadowed mine eyelids?  Never yet have I slept so sound since the day that Odysseus went forth to see that evil Ilios, never to be named.  Go to now, get thee down and back to the women’s chamber, for if any other of the maids of my house had come and brought me such tidings, and wakened me from sleep, straightway would I have sent her back woefully to return within the women’s chamber; but this time thine old age shall stand thee in good stead.’

Then the good nurse Eurycleia answered her:  ’I mock thee not, dear child, but in very deed Odysseus is here, and hath come home, even as I tell thee.  He is that guest on whom all men wrought such dishonour in the halls.  But long ago Telemachus was ware of him, that he was within the house, yet in his prudence he hid the counsels of his father, that he might take vengeance on the violence of the haughty wooers.’

Thus she spake, and then was Penelope glad, and leaping from her bed she fell on the old woman’s neck, and let fall the tears from her eyelids, and uttering her voice spake to her winged words:  ’Come, dear nurse, I pray thee, tell me all truly—­if indeed he hath come home as thou sayest—­how he hath laid his hands on the shameless wooers, he being but one man, while they abode ever in their companies within the house.’

Then the good nurse Eurycleia answered her:  ’I saw not, I wist not, only I heard the groaning of men slain.  And we in an inmost place of the well-builded chambers sat all amazed, and the close-fitted doors shut in the room, till thy son called me from the chamber, for his father sent him out to that end.  Then I found Odysseus standing among the slain, who around him, stretched on the hard floor, lay one upon the other; it would have comforted thy heart to see him, all stained like a lion with blood and soil of battle.  And now are all the wooers gathered in an heap by the gates of the court, while he is purifying his fair house with brimstone, and hath kindled a great fire, and hath sent me forth to call thee.  So come with me, that ye may both enter into your heart’s delight, {*} for ye have suffered much affliction.  And even now hath this thy long desire been fulfilled; thy lord hath come alive to his own hearth, and hath found both thee and his son in the halls; and the wooers that wrought him evil he hath slain, every man of them in his house.’

{* Reading [Greek] . . . [Greek].}