Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/295

 METAMORPHOSES BOOK V suppliant in behalf of my child and your own. If you have no regard for the mother, at least let the daughter touch her father's heart. And let not your care for her be less because I am her mother. See, my daughter, sought so long, has at last been found, if you call it finding more certainly to lose her, or if you call it finding merely to know where she is. That she has been stolen, I will bear, if only he will bring her back; for your daughter does not deserve to have a robber for a husband-if now she is not ine." And Jove replied: "She is, indeed, our daughter, yours and mine, our common pledge and care. But if only we are willing to give right names to things, this is no harm that has been done, but onlv love. Nor will he shame us for a son-in-law -do you but consent, goddess. Though all else be lacking, how great a thing it is to be Jove's brother! But what that other things are not lacking, and that he does not yield place to me-save only by the lot? But if you so greatly desire to separate them, Proserpina shall return to heaven, but on one condition only: if in the lower-world no food has as yet touched her lips. For so have the fates decreed." « < He spoke; but Ceres was resolved to have her daughter back. Not so the fates; for the girl had already broken her fast, and while, simple child that she was, she wandered in the trim gardens, she had plucked a purple pomegranate hanging from a bending bough, and peeling off the yellowish rind, she had eaten seven of the seeds. The only one who saw the act was Ascalaphus, whom Orphne, not the least famous of the Avernal nymphs, is said to have borne to her own Acheron within the dark groves of the lower-world. The boy saw, and by his cruel tattling thwarted the girl's return to earth. Thern 275