_Tel._ See, I am just escaped with life: Spare questioning. First let the gods be served: 1180 Go bid thy maidens, ere the night close in, Prepare a worthy sacrifice to Zeus; Ay, such a sacrifice, as to this day This house has never seen. _Pen._ ’Tis very meet. Yet why this urgence? there hath something passed Thou keepest back. Is’t possible, my boy, That in the southern courts some lady’s eyes Have drawn thee to vow hecatombs? _Tel._ Nay, mother. _Pen._ I should be glad. What is it then hath changed thee? _Tel._ How am I changed? 1190 _Pen._ Thou art aloof and strange. _Tel._ It ever dulled my kinder spirits to view These robbers in my father’s hall. _Pen._ Alas! What could I do, my son, and thou away? Here is no change, nor ever any tidings. I have neither power nor reason on my side: I cannot say My lord is yet alive, Wherefore depart, ye wrong me; nor as little My lord is dead, I will requite your honour, And choose the worthiest. O, where’er thou hast been, If aught thou hast learned of any certainty, 1200 Speak now, whate’er it be, fear not to tell: Tell of thy sire, my son, though ’tis his death! _Tel._ Now heaven forbid that word. _Pen._ Alas, Telemachus; What is our hope? Or if thou know of any, Why art thou reticent of it? _Tel._ Hearken, mother: If thou wilt hear me, I will tell my story, As time allows, stripped of all circumstance. First sailed I then to Pylos, where I found Nestor, who lovingly my stay entreated, And held me as his son, but, when he learned 1210 My quest, and nothing knew of my dear father, Would have me go, and with a royal escort Conveyed me to the court of Menelaus: There I saw Argive Helen.— But Menelaus, when I told my tale Brake out in anger, and I think few words Would draw him hither with his dukes to sweep Our house of its dishonour; but in fine Thus much he said, that still Ulysses lived, But with the nymph Calypso in her isle 1220 By subtle sleights withheld; in whom it lay That he was not returned, and might not yet; But there abode. Then, since he knew no more, I sped me home, and should have sped to death, Had not divine Athenè sent a dream To warn me of the ambush, with the wind To bring me round the isle: wherefore I bid thee Perform the sacrifice, lest for such favour We seem ungrateful. _Pen._ Didst thou never ask Of Menelaus, how he came to know 1230 Thy father’s fate?