The same rocky coasts, the same great mountain in the centre of the island raising its head into the clouds, everywhere eternally the same, and how beloved! was it not all mist and dreams—the long past? How he heard the Sirens sing, seen the swaying arms of the foul Scylla, and dwelt in love and slumber with Calypso?
And by his side once more stood the goddess, serene and beautiful in her benevolent but awful calm. From her lips he had heard that here, even here in his own land, in the fields of his inheritance, one more supreme effort awaited him. He had learnt how his palace was full of riotous princes, who wooed his wife, the Queen Penelope. He knew how his son, the goodly Prince Telemachus, was least in his own house, and how wild revel and wantonness ate up his substance. The queen in peril! Penelope all but given up to the desires of lust and greed. All his great heart burnt with anger and hate against the suitors, and yet, with a strange dual emotion, beat high with pride for his dear and stainless lady, who still mourned for her husband, and longed against hope for his return.
He kissed the kindly home-ground, and at that sacred contact a sense of strength and power came to him, a god-like power, that in all his long toils and wanderings he had never known before.
He became conscious that Athene was speaking to him. “And remember ever, my Ulysses, that now thou hast need of all thy wit and cunning. In all the chances of thy life before never hadst thou need to walk as warily as now. For mere strength and valour unallied to wisdom and cunning will avail one nothing against the hundred. But at the hour of need I will be once more with thee if thou doest well and wisely. Courage! son of Laertes! ’tis but a little while till the end. Let not thy love and hate master thee until the appointed hour. And now, that thou mayest walk in thy palace and groves unknown for who thou art, I give thee a disguise. And so farewell until the hour of triumph.”
She stretched out her spear over the kneeling king. The firm flesh dried and wrinkled upon his arms and legs. His hair shrivelled up into grey sparseness and his eyes dimmed. He wore a tattered cloak, a thing of shreds and patches, and an old beggar’s staff of ilex was in his hand.
But beneath this seeming age and weakness was hidden the true hero as strong and cunning as before.
The goddess turned into light and was no more, and with slow, tottering footsteps Ulysses took a lonely way among the well-remembered paths of his native hills.
After an hour’s travelling he came out on a smooth pasture land, with a little homestead nestling among a clump of trees. His heart beat eagerly within him, for if perchance after these long years farmer Eumæus still lived, here he might gain news of his palace and perhaps a friend.
Eumæus was once the steward of the estates and a very faithful servant of his master. Ulysses approached the house. In front was a large courtyard, made by a fence of oak and hawthorn boughs, and within were twelve great pens for swine.
And in the porch sat old Eumæus himself making himself a pair of sandals, hardly changed in a single feature, though perhaps his eyes were not so bright as in the old times.