Love and Life | Page 2

night in the dark, she was conscious of a presence who called himself her husband, showed the fondest affection for her, and promised her all sorts of glory and bliss, if she would be patient and obedient for a time.
This lasted till yearnings awoke to see her family. She obtained consent with much difficulty and many warnings. Then the splendour in which she lived excited the jealousy of her sisters, and they persuaded her that her visitor was really the monster who would deceive her and devour her. They thus induced her to accept a lamp with which to gaze on him when asleep. She obeyed them, then beholding the exquisite beauty of the sleeping god of love, she hung over him in rapture till a drop of the hot oil fell on his shoulder and awoke him. He sprang up, sorrowfully reproached her with having ruined herself and him, and flew away, letting her fall as she clung to him.
The palace was broken up, the wrath of Venus pursued her; Ceres and all the other deities chased her from their temples; even when she would have drowned herself, the river god took her in his arms, and laid her on the bank. Only Pan had pity on her, and counselled her to submit to Venus, and do her bidding implicitly as the only hope of regaining her lost husband.
Venus spurned her at first, and then made her a slave, setting her first to sort a huge heap of every kind of grain in a single day. The ants, secretly commanded by Cupid, did this for her. Next, she was to get a lock of golden wool from a ram feeding in a valley closed in by inaccessible rocks; but this was procured for her by an eagle; and lastly, Venus, declaring that her own beauty had been impaired by attendance on her injured son, commanded Psyche to visit the Infernal Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower, when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate Cerberus with cakes after the approved fashion.
She thus reached Proserpine's throne, and obtained the casket, but when she had again reached the earth, she reflected that if Venus's beauty were impaired by anxiety, her own must have suffered far more; and the prohibition having of course been only intended to stimulate her curiosity, she opened the casket, out of which came the baneful fumes of Death! Just, however, as she fell down overpowered, her husband, who had been shut up by Venus, came to the rescue, and finding himself unable to restore her, cried aloud to Jupiter, who heard his prayer, reanimated Psyche, and gave her a place among the gods.


CHAPTERS
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I. A SYLLABUB PARTY. II. THE HOUSE OF DELAVIE. III. AMONG THE COWSLIPS. IV. MY LADY'S MISSIVE. V. THE SUMMONS. VI. DISAPPOINTED LOVE. VII. ALL ALONE. VIII. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE. IX. THE TRIAD. X. THE DARK CHAMBER. XI. A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE. XII. THE SHAFTS OF PHOEBE. XIII. THE FLUTTER OF HIS WINGS. XIV. THE CANON OF WINDSOR. XV. THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY. XVI. AUGURIES. XVII. THE VICTIM DEMANDED. XVIII. THE PROPOSAL. XIX. WOOING IN THE DARK. XX. THE MUFFLED BRIDEGROOM. XXI. THE SISTER'S MEETING XXII. A FATAL SPARK. XXIII. WRATH AND DESOLATION. XXIV. THE WANDERER. XXV. VANISHED. XXVI. THE TRACES. XXVII. CYTHEREA'S BOWER. XXVIII. THE ROUT. XXIX. A BLACK BLONDEL. XXX. THE FIRST TASK. XXXI. THE SECOND TASK. XXXII. LIONS. XXXIII. THE COSMETIC. XXXIV. DOWN THE RIVER. XXXV. THE RETURN. XXXVI. WAKING. XXXVII. MAKING THE BEST OF IT.

LOVE AND LIFE.


CHAPTER I
. A SYLLABUB PARTY.
Oft had I shadowed such a group Of beauties that were born In teacup times of hood and hoop, And when the patch was worn; And legs and arms with love-knots gay. About me leaped and laughed The modish Cupid of the day, And shrilled his tinselled shaft.--Tennyson.
If times differ, human nature and national character vary but little; and thus, in looking back on former times, we are by turns startled by what is curiously like, and curiously unlike, our own sayings and doings.
The feelings of a retired officer of the nineteenth century expecting the return of his daughters from the first gaiety of the youngest darling, are probably not dissimilar to those of Major Delavie, in the earlier half of the seventeen hundreds, as he sat in the deep bay window of his bed-room; though he wore a green velvet nightcap; and his whole provision of mental food consisted of half a dozen worn numbers of the _Tatler_, and a Gazette a fortnight old. The chair on which he sat was elbowed, and made