will not believe. There is a quiet sadness, but no reproach, in the hero's reply:—
Behold me as I am! By earth and sea
Scourged with affliction, in the twentieth year,
Safe to mine own land at the last I flee."
It is long before either, in their first emotion, can find words to tell their story. Ulysses takes his son fully into his counsels, and charges him to keep the news of his return as yet a secret even from his mother, until they two shall discover who among the household can be trusted to aid them in the extermination of the intruders and their powerful retinue. He knows that his day of vengeance is come at last, and nothing less than this will satisfy him. Telemachus has some timorous misgivings, according to his nature—What are they two against so many? But Ulysses knows that the gods are on his side—Minerva and the Father of the gods himself; or shall we say with the allegorists, in this case, the Counsels of Heaven and the Justice of Heaven? There is a grand irony in the question which he puts to his son—"Thinkest thou these allies will suffice, or shall we seek for other helpers?"
