CHAPTER NINE
The Queen's Suitors.--The Battle of the Beggars.--The Armour Taken Down.--
The Meeting with Penelope.
From the house of Eumaeus the seeming beggar took his way, leaning on his
staff, till he reached the palace, entering in at the hall where the
suitors sat at meat. They in the pride of their feasting began to break
their jests in mirthful manner, when they saw one looking so poor and so
aged approach. He, who expected no better entertainment, was nothing moved
at their behaviour, but, as became the character which he had assumed, in
a suppliant posture crept by turns to every suitor, and held out his hands
for some charity, with such a natural and beggar-resembling grace that he
might seem to have practised begging all his life; yet there was a sort of
dignity in his most abject stoopings, that whoever had seen him would have
said, If it had pleased Heaven that this poor man had been born a king, he
would gracefully have filled a throne. And some pitied him, and some gave
him alms, as their present humours inclined them, but the greater part
reviled him, and bade him begone, as one that spoiled their feast; for the
presence of misery has this power with it, that, while it stays, it can
ash and overturn the mirth even of those who feel no pity or wish to
relieve it: nature bearing this witness of herself in the hearts of the
most obdurate.
[Illustration: _But the greater part reviled him and bade him begone_.]
Now Telemachus sat at meat with the suitors, and knew that it was the king
his father who in that shape begged an alms; and when his father came and
presented himself before him in turn, as he had done to the suitors one by
one, he gave him of his own meat which he had in his dish, and of his own
cup to drink.
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