THEY CAME TO THE BRINK OF THE RIVER.
Page [52].
Then with a long melancholy cry the figure vanished into the dark.
But in its place came a shadowy form which made the heart of the hero leap and beat, so it seemed all Hades was filled with the tumult.
His mother Anticlea stood before him.
Stretching out her cold, thin hands she spoke.
“My boy that I suckled, why hast thou come into Hades not yet being dead, for I see that the flesh is still warm upon thee for which I drank to Zeus?”
“Mother of mine, I sought Tiresias the Theban prophet. I have not even yet won Ithaca nor seen the dear ones there. A god is against me. So I came through the spirits of the unburied, and over the dark river to seek counsel of the seer. Knowest thou in this beyond-earth if the beloved Penelope still holds me in her heart? or is she perhaps here with thee, lost to the sunlight?”
The mother of Ulysses answered, “Penelope is as faithful and true as on thy wedding day, but she is in a peril, so haste ye home. And now farewell.” Where Ulysses had seen his mother, was but a little grey vapour which swayed and vanished.