nd thirstily devoured all things that would
stand against it. And ere the crackle of the flames and their great
sigh of fierce desire had ceased, there came in his ears the sound of
many waters, the booming rush of an angry river in furious flood, the
irresistible command of the almighty waves of the sea. Yet still
Aristaeus held the chains, and at last Proteus took his own shape
again, and with a sigh like the sigh of winds and waves on the
desolate places where ships become wrecks, and men perish and there is
never a human soul to save or to pity them, he spoke to Aristaeus.

"Puny one!" he said, "and puny are thy wishes! Because thou didst by
thy foolish wooing send the beautiful Eurydice swiftly down to the
Shades and break the heart of Orpheus, whose music is the music of the
Immortals, the bees that thou hast treasured have left their hives
empty and silent. So little are the bees! so great, O Aristaeus, the
bliss or woe of Orpheus and Eurydice! Yet, because by guile thou hast
won the power to gain from me the knowledge that thou dost seek,
hearken to me now, Aristaeus! Four bulls must thou find--four cows of
equal beauty. Then must thou build in a leafy grove four altars, and
to Orpheus and Eurydice pay such funeral honours as may allay their
resentment. At the end of nine days, when thou hast fulfilled thy
pious task, return and see what the gods have sent thee."

"This will I do most faithfully, O Proteus," said Aristaeus, and
gravely loosened the chains and returned to where his mother awaited
him, and thence travelled to his own sunny land of Greece.

Most faithfully, as he had said, did Aristaeus perform his vow. And
when, on the ninth day, he returned to the grove of sacrifice, a sound
greeted him which made his heart stop and then go on beating and
throbbing as the heart of a man who has striven valiantly in a great
fight and to whom the battle is assured.

For, from the carcase of one of the animals offered for sacrifice, and
whose clean white bones now gleamed in the rays of the sun that forced
its way through the thick shade of the grove of grey olives, there
came the "murmuring of innumerable bees."

"Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth
sweetness."

And Aristaeus, a Samson of the old Greek days, rejoiced exceedingly,
knowing that his thoughtless sin was pardoned, and that for evermore
to him belonged the pride of giving to all men the power of taming
bees, the glory of