[Battered by grief as he is, worn thin by sleepless nights and tear-hazed days], he has not the fortitude to try to decipher what words he might know; he listens as the jewelry reads the message for him, and he answers in speech.]

What in this far-flung land is so beloved of my beloved?

[Neither incredulity nor derision whips from his tongue: this he asks plainly.]

Were I to spread his ashes over any place, it would be the verdant wilds of Mount Pelion, which in boyhood we called our home. His white bones I shall gather from the ashes once the corpse-fire has cooled, and these I shall seal in the golden urn silver-footed Thetis bequeathed me. When I too must go down to the House of Death, the fate that fast awaits me, mine own bones shall be joined with his, buried together by the Hellespont, robbed as we both were of our journey home: this was the last wish of great-hearted Patroclus, and to this promise my heart is bound. His grey ashes, however...with these I know not what to do.