So to their
feasting and vain rioting again they fell. Ulysses, by Telemachus's order,
had a seat and a mess assigned him in the doorway, and he had his eye ever
on the lances. And it moved gall in some of the great ones there present
to have their feast still dulled with the society of that wretched beggar
as they deemed him, and they reviled and spurned at him with their feet.
Only there was one Philaetius, who had something a better nature than the
rest, that spake kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He, coming up
to Ulysses, took him by the hand with a kind of fear, as if touched
exceedingly with imagination of his great worth, and said thus to him,
"Hail father stranger! my brows have sweat to see the injuries which you
have received, and my eyes have broke forth in tears, when I have only
thought that, such being oftentimes the lot of worthiest men, to this
plight Ulysses may be reduced, and that he now may wander from place to
place as you do; for such who are compelled by need to range here and
there, and have no firm home to fix their feet upon, God keeps them in
this earth as under water; so are they kept down and depressed. And a dark
thread is sometimes spun in the fates of kings."
At this bare likening of the beggar to Ulysses, Minerva from heaven made
the suitors for foolish joy to go mad, and roused them to such a laughter
as would never stop--they laughed without power of ceasing, their eyes
stood full of tears for violent joys; but fears and horrible misgivings
succeeded; and one among them stood up and prophesied: "Ah, wretches!" he
said, "what madness from heaven has seized you, that you can laugh? see
you not that your meat drops blood? a night, like the night of death,
wraps you about; you shriek without knowing it; your eyes thrust forth
tears; the fixed walls, and the beam that bears the whole house up, fall
blood; ghosts choke up the entry; full is the hall with apparitions of
murdered men; under your feet is hell; the sun falls from heaven, and it
is midnight at noon.
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