eanders mind, as
there is in Hero's, whose words and actions are even more indelicate
than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess
of Venus true to her function--a girl to whom the higher feminine
virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the
impulse of the moment, in response to coarse flattery, she makes an
assignation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of
her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the
poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid's
version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic
love--soul-love--there is no trace in either version. There are
touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction
on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).

CUPID AND PSYCHE

To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and
Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries
(and of which _Lohengrin_ is a familiar instance), that were
originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women
must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who
may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as
such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that _Cupid and Psyche_ is
a story of "modern" romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact
that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that
had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love--or
conjugal affection either--it would have required great ingenuity on
his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously
excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not
only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it
flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant
attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods
of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from
the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated.
Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche
on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche
by making her fall in love violently (_amore flagrantissimo_) with the
lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time
Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to
an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disob