hollow in the earth, and would dabble
with her hand in the water. Behold, up through its sandy and pebbly bed,
along with the fountain's gush, a young woman with dripping hair would
arise, and stand gazing at Mother Ceres, half out of the water, and
undulating up and down with its ever-restless motion. But when the
mother asked whether her poor lost child had stopped to drink out of the
fountain, the naiad, with weeping eyes (for these water nymphs had tears
to spare for everybody's grief), would answer, "No!" in a murmuring
voice, which was just like the murmur of the stream.

Often, likewise, she encountered fauns, who looked like sunburnt country
people, except that they had hairy ears, and little horns upon their
foreheads, and the hinder legs of goats, on which they gambolled merrily
about the woods and fields. They were a frolicsome kind of creature,
but grew as sad as their cheerful dispositions would allow when Ceres
inquired for her daughter, and they had no good news to tell. But
sometimes she came suddenly upon a rude gang of satyrs, who had faces
like monkeys and horses' tails behind them, and who were generally
dancing in a very boisterous manner, with shouts of noisy laughter. When
she stopped to question them, they would only laugh the louder and make
new merriment out of the lone woman's distress. How unkind of those ugly
satyrs! And once, while crossing a solitary sheep pasture, she saw a
personage named Pan, seated at the foot of a tall rock and making music
on a shepherd's flute. He, too, had horns, and hairy ears, and goat's
feet; but, being acquainted with Mother Ceres, he answered her question
as civilly as he knew how, and invited her to taste some milk and honey
out of a wooden bowl. But neither could Pan tell her what had become of
Proserpina, any better than the rest of these wild people.

And thus Mother Ceres went wandering about for nine long days and
nights, finding no trace of Proserpina, unless it were now and then a
withered flower; and these she picked up and put in her bosom, because
she fancied that they might have fallen from her poor child's hand. All
day she travelled onward through the hot sun; and at night, again, the
flame of the torch would redden and gleam along the pathway, and she
continued her search by its light, without ever sitting down to rest.

On the tenth day, she chanced to espy the mouth of a cavern, within
which (though it was bright noon everywhere else) there w