Penelope talked with every stranger who came to Ithaca and asked for news of the hero. His companions were said to have returned long ago—Nestor to Pylos, Menelaus to Sparta; no one knew what had become of Ulysses or whether he was dead or living. For nine years longer the poor woman nursed her grief, until nineteen years had passed since she had seen her lord. He had left her with a nursling, now grown into a handsome lad, who was her only consolation, but much too impotent to cope with the presumptuous rabble, which became each year more insistent and at length hit upon a cruel means of forcing the poor lady to return to her father’s house. They leagued themselves with the princes of the neighborhood, over a hundred in number, and agreed that they would all assemble each morning at Ulysses’ palace, there to consume the produce of his herds and granaries and to drink his wines, until his heir, Telemachus, for fear of becoming impoverished, should be compelled to thrust his faithful mother from the door and thus force her into another marriage. Thenceforth the great halls of Ulysses’ palace were filled from morning till night with these uninvited guests, who compelled the king’s servants to do their bidding. They took what they wanted and mocked the owners with loud shouts and laughter. The herds were diminishing perceptibly, the abundance of grain and wine disappearing, and there was no one able to check the robbers. Penelope sat in her upper chamber at her loom and wept; Telemachus was derided whenever he showed himself among the insolent crowd. A god had brought this woe upon Ulysses’ house. Poseidon, ruler of the sea, was angry at the hero, who had sorely offended him. Therefore he drove him from south to north and from east to west upon the broad seas, dashed his ships to pieces, killed his companions, and forced him through whirlpools and canyons to strange peoples. And now, while his insolent neighbors were consuming his substance, he was held a prisoner upon a lonely island far from home, where reigned Calypso, a daughter of the gods. She desired him for her husband, but Ulysses brooded continually upon his dear country, his wife, and son. He went daily to the shore, and seated himself mournfully by the surf, wishing for nothing more ardently than that he might see the smoke ascending from his own hearth before he died.