Telemachus had seen no such house as this. The roof was high, and somehow the smoke got out and the light got in; you would think the sun or the moon was shining. The size and the wealth of it embarrassed him. He remembered that his father had more brains, but the thought didn’t bring ease of manner. They took him to the marble baths, where the attendants embarrassed him further by the thorough washing they gave him, and they oiled his hair, and put on him better clothes than he was accustomed to. Menelaus came to welcome him, a tall man with beautiful long, dark locks, which needed no oil to make them shine. He wasn’t so impressive as his house. It occurred to Telemachus that he was beginning to miss his daily exercise at Troy; he was of a full habit. At the feast which Menelaus ordered for the guest, he showed that loss of exercise does not diminish appetite.

“I’ve never seen a house like this,” said Telemachus, “and though I haven’t travelled far, I doubt if there’s another such in the world. All this bronze and gold and amber, to say nothing of the silver and ivory! The court of Zeus himself on Olympus must be like this—it can’t be much finer.”

Menelaus put on a sober air, and said that no one ought to compare himself to the gods, but it certainly was a satisfactory house. That is, the building.

“But I would exchange a large part of my wealth,” he said, “to have back the years I spent away from this house, and the friends of mine who died at Troy, or were lost on the way home. Of course, we all have to die sometime, and I dare say many of them would now be in their graves anyway, even if there had been no Troy. But I’m sorry for one friend in particular—for Odysseus. You must have heard the name. He did more than any of the others for me, and here I am home again, and nobody knows where he is, or whether he is alive at all. I dare say his old father has a broken heart, and his wife, and that infant son of his, who must be growing up now.”