and Ulysses said, "May Jove and all the other gods requite you for the
kind speeches and hospitable usage which you have shown me!"

Eumaeus made answer, "My poor guest, if one in much worse plight than
yourself had arrived here, it were a shame to such scanty means as I have
if I had let him depart without entertaining him to the best of my
ability. Poor men, and such as have no houses of their own, are by Jove
himself recommended to our care. But the cheer which we that are servants
to other men have to bestow is but sorry at most, yet freely and lovingly
I give it you. Indeed, there once ruled here a man, whose return the gods
have set their faces against, who, if he had been suffered to reign in
peace and grow old among us, would have been kind to me and mine. But he
is gone; and for his sake would to God that the whole posterity of Helen
might perish with her, since in her quarrel so many worthies have
perished! But such as your fare is, eat it, and be welcome--such lean
beasts as are food for poor herdsmen. The fattest go to feed the voracious
stomachs of the queen's suitors. Shame on their unworthiness! there is no
day in which two or three of the noblest of the herd are not slain to
support their feasts and their surfeits."

[Illustration: '_But such as your fare is, eat it, and be welcome_.']

Ulysses gave good ear to his words; and as he ate his meat, he even tore
it and rent it with his teeth, for mere vexation that his fat cattle
should be slain to glut the appetites of those godless suitors. And he
said, "What chief or what ruler is this, that thou commendest so highly,
and sayest that he perished at Troy? I am but a stranger in these parts.
It may be I have heard of some such in my long travels."

Eumaeus answered, "Old father, never any one of all the strangers that