Part 12

When Psyche reached the top of the hill and entered the temple, she saw heaps of corn, some in sheaves and others in loose ears, and there was barley mingled with it. There were sickles and rakes and all the other instruments of the harvest scattered about in great confusion as if the reapers, at the end of the sultry day, had left them in this disorder. In spite of her sorrow, Psyche could not bear to see this disarray and she began trying to set the place in order. She worked so busily that she did not see Ceres, whose temple it was, enter. Turning at last, Psyche saw the goddess of the harvest, wearing her fruit trimmed garments and standing at her side.

"Poor Psyche!" she said pityingly. "But it is possible for you to find a way to the abode of the gods where Cupid has his home. Go and surrender yourself to Venus and try by your own works to win her forgiveness and, perhaps, her favor."

So Psyche obeyed this command of Ceres, although it took a great deal of courage, and she travelled to the temple of Venus in Thebes where the goddess received her in anger.

"The only way by which you can merit the favor of the gods, unfortunate Psyche," she said, "is by your own efforts. I, myself, am going to make a trial of your housewifely skill to see if you are industrious and dilligent."

With these words Venus conducted Psyche to a storehouse connected with her temple where there was an enormous quantity of grain laid up; beans, lentils, barley, wheat and the tiny seeds of the millet which Venus had stored to feed her pigeons.

"Separate all these grains," the goddess said to Psyche, "putting those of the same kind in a pile, and see that you finish before evening." Then she left Psyche who was in consternation at the impossible task spread before her.

Psyche dipped her fingers into the golden heap gathering up a handful to sort the grains, but it took her a long time and the grain lay about her on every side like a yellow river. The grains she held were less than a drop taken from its surface.

"I shall not be able to finish. I shall never see my husband again!" Psyche moaned.

Still she worked on steadily and at last a little ant, a native of the fields, crawled across the floor and took compassion on the toiling Psyche. It was a king in its own domain and was followed by a host of its little red subjects. Grain by grain, they separated the seeds, helping to put them in their own piles, and when the work was accomplished they vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

When evening came Venus returned, breathing odors of nectar and crowned with roses, from a banquet of the gods. When she saw that Psyche's task was done, she scarcely believed her eyes.

"You must have had assistance," she said. "To-morrow you shall try a more difficult undertaking. Beyond my temple you will see a grassy meadow which stretches along the borders of the water. There you will find a flock of sheep with golden shining fleeces on their backs and grazing without a shepherd. Bring me a sample of their precious wool that you gather from each of the fleeces."

Psyche once more obeyed, but this was a test of her life as well as of her endurance. As she reached the meadow, the river god, whispering to her through the rushes, warned her.

"Do not venture among the flock while the sun shines on them," he told her. "In the heat of the rising sun, the rams burn with a cruel rage to destroy mortals with their sharp teeth. Wait until twilight, when you will find their woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the trunks of the trees."

The compassion of the river god helped Psyche to do as Venus had commanded her and she returned to the temple in the evening with her arms full of golden fleece.

Still Venus was not satisfied.

"I have a third task for you," she told the weary Psyche. "Take this box to the realm of Pluto and give it to Proserpine saying to her, 'My mistress, Venus, desires you to send her a little of your beauty, for in tending her son whom Psyche burned she has lost some of her own.' And make all possible haste, for I must use it before I appear next in the circle of the gods on Mount Olympus."

Psyche felt that now her destruction was surely at hand. It was a dangerous road that led to the dark, underground kingdom of Pluto and there were deadly dangers on the way. But Psyche was finding a new courage with each of the difficulties that she had to encounter, and she set out with the box. She passed safely by Cerberus, Pluto's three headed watch dog. She prevailed upon Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and wait for her while she begged Proserpine to fill the box. Then she started back to the light again.

All would have gone well with Psyche if she had not grown curious. That was why her road to the dwelling place of the gods was so long and difficult. Psyche was always mixing up a little bit of earth with her good intentions. Having come so far successfully with her dangerous task, she wanted to open the box.

"I would take only the least bit of this beauty from Venus," Psyche thought, "to make myself more fair for Cupid if I ever behold him again."

So she carefully opened the box, but there was nothing in it of beauty at all. It was a potion that caused Psyche to fall beside the road in a sleep which seemed to have no waking. She did not stir, or breathe, or remember.

It was there that love, in the form of Cupid found Psyche. He was healed of his wound, and he could not bear her absence any longer. He flew through a crack in the window of the palace of Venus and made his way to earth and straight to the spot where Psyche lay. He gathered the deadly sleep from her body and put it fast inside the box again. Then he touched her lightly with one of his arrows and she woke.

"Again you have almost perished because of your curiosity," he said as Psyche reached up her arms to him "but perform exactly this task which my mother asked of you and I will attend to the rest."

Then Cupid, as swift as a bird flies, returned to Mount Olympus and pleaded with Jupiter for a welcome for Psyche. Jupiter consented at last to have this daughter of earth admitted to the family of the gods and Mercury was sent to bring her and offer her the cup of ambrosial nectar that would make her one of the immortals.

It is said that at the moment when Psyche completed her tasks and took her departure for Mount Olympus a winged creature, the butterfly, that had never been seen before on earth, arose from a garden and flew on golden wings up toward the sun. So it was thought that the story of Psyche was the story of the butterfly who bursts its gray house of the cocoon and rises, with a new beauty and the power of wings, toward the sky. And the Greeks had still another name for Psyche whom neither her troubles or the sleep of Pluto could keep from the abode of the gods when Love pleaded for her. They spoke of her as the Soul.

HOW MELAMPOS FED THE SERPENT.

There was a hollow oak tree in front of the house of Melampos in Greece and inside it was a nest of serpents.

Melampos was a farmer, skilful in raising fruits and grains and full of love for everything that lived out of doors. He would not so much as crush an ant hurrying home to its hill with a grain of sand, and although he did not particularly like snakes he saw no harm in these that had made themselves a home in a tree that no one wanted.

"They will do us no hurt unless we disturb them," Melampos told his servants. "Let them alone and perhaps, when the weather is warmer, they will take their way off to the neighboring marsh."

But Melampos' servants were not so sure as he of the harmlessness of the serpents.

"Our master is growing old and child like," they said to each other. "The next time he drives to the city with a load of grain we will get rid of the nest of vipers."

So that was what they did. In Melampos' absence they fired the nest of the serpents with a torch and burned it up completely, as they thought. But when Melampos returned that afternoon and sat down under his arbor to rest and eat his supper of bread and grapes, he saw a pair of bright black eyes peering up at him from the grass. Then he spied a round green head raised above a long green body. It was one of the young serpents that had not been hurt when the nest was burned and had come to the master of the place for protection.

Melampos looked cautiously around to see that no one was watching him.

"If any of the servants see me, they will think me out of my senses," he said to himself, "but I am sorry for this little creature and would befriend it." Then, seeing that he was quite unobserved, Melampos broke off a piece of his bread and threw the crumbs to the young serpent. It devoured them to the last one and then glided off so silently that it left no trail except a long line of gently moving grasses.

The next day the serpent came and the next, always hungry and always lifting its little head and looking at Melampos in its odd, bright way. One day as Melampos broke his bread as usual to share it with the serpent, he heard a voice speaking to him.

"The gods have been watching your kindness, Melampos," it said, "and have rewarded you in the way you will like best. They have given you the power of understanding the tongues of the wild."

Melampos looked all about him, but there was not another mortal within sight. Then his eyes caught those of the serpent and he suddenly realized that it had been its voice which he had heard. That was the beginning of strange experiences for Melampos upon whom the gods had conferred so wonderful a gift.

The serpent never returned after that day, but that very same evening a tree toad spoke to Melampos.

"Water your olive trees well around the roots, Melampos," it said, "for there is a season of drought approaching."

That was an excellent warning, because the farmer had a grove of young trees that needed very tender care. Melampos sprayed the trees and soaked the roots and felt very thankful to the tree toad for its advice.

After a few days of dry weather Melampos was on his way to the city when a grasshopper spoke to him from the side of the road.

"Turn back, Melampos, and gather your sheaves of wheat into your storehouse," the grasshopper said, "for Jupiter is about to send a thunderbolt down to the earth."

That was exactly what happened. Melampos had just time to reach his grain field and order his men to put the ripe sheaves safely under cover when the sky grew black and the thunder rolled along the mountain tops. A high wind blew and the rain was heavy, but Melampos had saved his harvest.

All outdoors talked to Melampos after that, and it was very pleasant indeed, for he had no boys and girls of his own to keep him company. If he sat down to rest on a bank of moss in the forest, he was at once surrounded by friends. A little wild bee would light on a branch in front of him and tell him where he might find its sweet comb dripping with honey nearby. A butterfly would poise on his rough, soil stained hand and tell him where he would be able to see a bed of yellow daffodils beside a brook. Or a bird in a nearby bush would sing to him of the gay doings of Pan and the dryads and tell him the road to take to their haunts farther and deeper in the woods.

Melampos had never had such a good time in his life. He was an excellent husbandman and managed to make his farm pay well every year, but he cared very much more for this friendship of outdoors than he did for the hoards of food each harvest gave him. And, more and more, he came to stay in the woods and fields, holding conversation with the insects and the wild animals.

One harvest season Melampos was returning from the market with a large purse of gold pieces that had just been paid him for the sale of his summer wheat. He was taking his way through a deserted path of the forest where he hoped he might hear the echo, at least, of the merry pipes of Pan. He had not a thought or care in the world when, in an instant, he was laid low on the ground from a blow on his head, his gold was snatched away from him, and he was bound so tightly that he could not move. Melampos had been set upon by a band of robbers who threw him over the back of a horse and made off with him into the recesses of the forest.

It was not that peaceful, sylvan grove of the forest that Pan and his friends inhabited, but a dark, gloomy part where it was so still that even the sound of a twig falling to the ground seemed as loud as the splintering of an arrow, and no one ever passed by. The robbers put Melampos in an underground passage of a prison-like fortress which they had built for themselves. From beam to floor the fortress was built all of oak planks so old and thick and so completely covered with ivy on the outside that it looked like part of the forest itself.

Melampos had only a slit in the wall for a window, and he never saw his captors save when they tossed him some dried crusts once a day. He could hear them, though, counting their stolen coin and rattling it about. Then he heard the sound of clinking armor and the occasional clashing of swords.

"They are planning to kill me," he thought.

He looked longingly at the narrow chink in his prison wall, hardly large enough to let a sunbeam through.

"If I could but beckon to a wood pigeon and tell it my plight, I should be able to send a message to my friends by it," he sighed, "or I could ask the woodpecker who can bore through wood to try and widen my window so that I might escape."

Just then Melampos heard a rustling sound in the heavy beam of the ceiling of the room where he was imprisoned and then a small voice spoke to him.

"We could teach you better than any other creatures how to escape," it said. "For years this forest has belonged to us, small as we are, and in a very short time now it will return to the earth from which the trees that built it came."

Melampos was amazed. He looked in all the corners of the room but could see no one. Then the voice went on.

"No wood, or men who live in shelters made of wood are safe from us. We have bored the beams and timbers of this fortress in a thousand places until they are hollow and ready to fall."

Suddenly Melampos discovered the source of the voice. Through a knothole in a beam above his head a wood worm peered down at him. With its companions it had eaten the planks that made the fortress until it was no safer than a house of paper.

"We are all doomed," Melampos told one of the robbers who brought him his food that night.

"Doomed; what do you mean by that?" the robber asked in terror, for like most of his kind he was nothing but a coward at heart.

Melampos showed him the decayed wood, hollow, and riddled with holes, and the man called his companions to see their danger. They decided that they must flee from the fortress at once, and they decided to give Melampos his freedom. It would not have been safe to stay in the fortress another season, for almost as soon as the winter storms came it crumbled like a house of sand, and the ants and the crickets used it to make themselves winter shelters.

Melampos went back to his farm and the pleasant conversation of the insects, the birds, and his four-footed friends. He was the first mortal to have such friends, but there were others who followed him and found happiness, also, through being kind to little wild creatures.

HOW A HUNTRESS BECAME A BEAR.

Although Juno was the queen of the gods she had a failing that is common to mortals. She was very jealous, and particularly of any maiden of Earth whom she fancied might sometime be given a place by Jupiter among the great family of the gods on Mount Olympus. As soon as Juno saw Callisto, a beautiful huntress of the forests of Arcadia, she disliked her.

Perhaps Juno would have liked to be free to roam through the woods where Pan played his music for dancing and the Dryads sported from one season to another as Callisto did. The goddess may have envied the huntress her happy, free life with no royal duties to interfere with her daily chase of the deer or any heavy crown to keep the breezes from tossing her long dark hair. Callisto reverenced Jupiter and Juno alike, with no thought that she might be arousing the displeasure of the goddess, but one day a strange and fearful thing happened to her.

She had just raised her bow to her shoulder ready to shoot an arrow as straight as a dart through the green path of the forest when it suddenly struck her hand and she fell to the moss upon her hands and knees. She tried to reach out her arms in supplication but they had become thick and heavy and were covered with long black hair. Her hands grew rounded, were armed with crooked claws and served her for feet. Her voice, which had been so sweet that it charmed the birds when she called to them, changed to a terrifying growl.

Callisto raised herself as well as she could, lifting up her paws to beg mercy of the gods and uttering frightful roars as she bemoaned her fate. She had always been obliged to defend herself from the lions and wolves that haunted the forest and she felt that she would be at their mercy now. All at once, though, she understood what had happened to her. She, herself, was now no longer a mortal but a wild beast. Juno had persuaded Jupiter to change Callisto to the first bear.

She had never liked to be out in the wood at night, but now she had no shelter and had to roam through the darkness, pursued often by the same wild beasts whom it had been her custom to hunt before. She fled from her own dogs in terror and was in hourly terror of the same arrows which she had formerly aimed so straight. In the winter Callisto crawled into some hollow log or dug a cave for herself that she might keep alive during the season of the North Wind's reign, and when spring came she crawled out, lean and weak, to search for the wild bee's comb and the first juicy berries of the juniper.

One day a boy saw the bear as he was out hunting. Callisto saw him at the same time and realized that he was her own son, Arcas, now grown to be a tall youth and taking his part in the chase as his mother had so many seasons before. Callisto forgot her changed form in her great joy at seeing her son, and she arose to her hind feet and hastened toward him holding out her paws to embrace him. The boy, alarmed, raised his hunting spear and ran to meet the bear and thrust its point through her heart. Callisto's son would have killed her if Jupiter had not, just then, looked down on the forest from his throne and felt a sudden pity for the tragedy he had brought about.

The gods had made a long road in the sky that led to the palace of the Sun. Any one may see this road on a clear night, for it stretches across the face of the sky and is known as the Milky Way. The palaces of the illustrious gods stood on either side of the road and a little farther back were placed the homes of the lesser deities.

At the very moment that Arcas, his spear raised, rushed upon Callisto, two new comers appeared in the sky near the road of the gods. They had the form of a Great Bear and a Little Bear, but their bodies were made of brightly shining stars. The mighty Jupiter had transformed Callisto and her son into these two constellations.

How enraged Juno was when she found it out! She descended to the sea and told her troubles to Oceanus, a giant of the race of Titans who ruled the waters at that time.

"Do you wonder, Oceanus," Juno cried, "why I, the queen of the gods, have left the heavenly plains and seek your depths? It is because my authority has been set aside. I shall be supplanted among my fellow gods, for Callisto, the bear, has been taken up to the skies and given a place among the stars. Who can deny but that she may not occupy my throne next!"

"What would you have me do about it?" old Oceanus asked, a little puzzled as to why Juno had consulted him.

"I forbade Callisto to keep her human form and my will has been unjustly set aside," Juno replied. "Now that she has an abode on the road to heaven she will be able to take any form she desires and may come to you for help in her attempt to steal my throne. I command you to never allow the stars of her constellation to touch the waters."

Oceanus called a council of the other powers of the waters and they assented to Juno's decree. One after another the stars rose and set, touching the sea in their courses, but the Great Bear and the Little Bear moved ceaselessly round and round in the sky, never sinking to rest as the other stars did beneath the ocean. Juno had thought that this would be a punishment for them but as it turned out it was a kind of reward.

Because the Great Bear and the Little Bear were always to be seen in their changeless, shining course, people who were obliged to travel at night, and particularly those who were at sea, grew to depend upon them as a means of finding their way in the darkness. The last star in the tail of the Little Bear indicated the north and was known after a while as the Pole Star. The ancients called it also the Star of Arcadia, for it helped so many mariners to find their way home across the perilous waters.

It had happened to Juno, as it often happens to jealous people to-day, that she had not hurt Callisto in the least but had brought her a great deal of honor.

THE ADVENTURE OF GLAUCUS.

Glaucus, the fisherman, rubbed his eyes to find out if he was not dreaming. He had just drawn in his net to land and had emptied it, ready to sort the fish that lay, a large haul, all over the grass. But a strange thing was happening to them. Of a sudden, the fishes began to revive and move their fins exactly as if they were in the water. Then, as Glaucus looked at them in astonishment, the fishes one and all moved off to the water, plunged in, and swam away.

The spot where Glaucus fished was a beautiful island in the river, but a solitary place, for it was inhabited only by him. It was not used to pasture cattle even, or visited by anyone. No one was there to work sorcery with his haul. Glaucus did not know what to make of the happening.

"Can it be that the river-god is working this marvel?" he wondered to himself. Then it occurred to him that there might be some secret power in the thick green leaves that covered the island among the grasses.

"What may not be the power of this herb?" he asked himself, pulling up a handful of the leaves and tasting one.

Scarcely had the juices of the plant touched Glaucus' tongue than a strange feeling of restlessness filled him, and he was overcome by an unconquerable thirst. He could not keep away from the water but ran to the edge of the river where he had fished for so many years, plunged in and swam away toward the sea.

It was a wonderful, free kind of experience for Glaucus who had never known any life but that of hauling in his nets and then casting them again. As he followed the swiftly flowing currents, the waters of a hundred rivers flowed over him, washing away all that was mortal of the fisherman, and he came at last to the sea. A marvellous sight met him there. The surf that beat against a rocky shore became suddenly smooth, as a chariot drawn by horses shod with brass and having long floating manes of gold rolled toward Glaucus over the surface of the sea. A giant who held a three-pointed spear for crushing rocks and blew loud trumpet blasts from a great curved shell, drove the chariot toward Glaucus and then stopped, inviting him to ride down to the depths of the ocean.