The two young men were warmly welcomed, and were invited to
partake of the banquet without being asked their names. After the feast
they wondered at the splendor of the halls of gold, amber, and ivory, the
polished baths, and the fleecy garments in which they had been arrayed;
but Menelaus assured them that all his wealth was small compensation to
him for the loss of the warriors who had fallen before Troy, and above
all, of the great Ulysses, whose fate he knew not. Though Telemachus's
tears fell at his father's name, Menelaus did not guess to whom he spoke,
until Helen, entering from her perfumed chamber, saw the likeness between
the stranger and the babe whom Ulysses had left when he went to Troy, and
greeted their guest as Telemachus.
Then they sat in the splendid hall and talked of Troy,--Menelaus broken by
his many toils, Helen beautiful as when she was rapt away by Paris,
weaving with her golden distaff wound with violet wool, and the two young
men, who said little, but listened to the wondrous tale of the wanderings
of Menelaus. And they spoke of Ulysses: of the times when he had proved
his prudence as well as his craft; of his entering Troy as a beggar and
revealing the Achaian plots to Helen; of how he had prevented their
breaking out of the wooden horse too soon. Then the king told of his
interview with the Ancient of the Deep, in which he had learned the fate
of his comrades; of Agamemnon's death, and of the detention of Ulysses on
Calypso's isle, where he languished, weeping bitterly, because he had no
means of escape.
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