Page:Friendship - Ouida (1878) - vol. 1.djvu/12

viii 'So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing that is not,' he said to himself in glee—knowing that the box he would give to Pandora would not bear more confused and complex woes to the hapless earth than this gift of an ear to man.

But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears were wanted, he only made one.

Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, and resolved to avenge the theft of his milk-white herds which had led him such a weary chase through Tempe.

Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it, and strung across it a silver string from his own lyre, and with it gave to man one ear by which the voice of Truth should reach the brain.

'You have spoilt all my sport,' said the boy Hermês, angry and weeping.

'Nay,' said the elder brother, with a smile. 'Be comforted. The brazen trumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, and ten thousand mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice your ear instead of mine.'