ul wailing: below her yellow
wedding-veil the bride shook away her tears; insomuch that the whole
city was afflicted together at the ill-luck of the stricken house.

But the mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate,
and, these solemnities [65] being ended, the funeral of the living soul
goes forth, all the people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping,
assists not at her marriage but at her own obsequies, and while the
parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the daughter cries to
them: "Wherefore torment your luckless age by long weeping? This was
the prize of my extraordinary beauty! When all people celebrated us
with divine honours, and in one voice named the New Venus, it was then
ye should have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I understand that
that one name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and set me upon the
appointed place. I am in haste to submit to that well-omened marriage,
to behold that goodly spouse. Why delay the coming of him who was born
for the destruction of the whole world?"

She was silent, and with firm step went on the way. And they proceeded
to the appointed place on a steep mountain, and left there the maiden
alone, and took their way homewards dejectedly. The wretched parents,
in their close-shut house, yielded themselves to perpetual night; while
to Psyche, fearful and trembling and weeping sore upon the
mountain-top, comes the gentle Zephyrus. He lifts her mildly, and,
with vesture afloat on either side, bears her by his own soft breathing
over the windings of the hills, and sets her lightly among the flowers
in the bosom of a valley below.

Psyche, in those delicate grassy places, lying [66] sweetly on her dewy
bed, rested from the agitation of her soul and arose in peace. And lo!
a grove of mighty trees, with a fount of water, clear as glass, in the
midst; and hard by the water, a dwelling-place, built not by human
hands but by some divine cunning. One recognised, even at the
entering, the delightful hostelry of a god. Golden pillars sustained
the roof, arched most curiously in cedar-wood and ivory. The walls were
hidden under wrought silver:--all tame and woodland creatures leaping
forward to the visitor's gaze. Wonderful indeed was the craftsman,
divine or half-divine, who by the subtlety of his art had breathed so
wild a soul into the silver! The very pavement was distinct with
pictures in goodly stones. In the glow of its precious metal the