“I will ask Pan,” she exclaimed.

Pan at that time inhabited a cavern hard by the maiden’s dwelling, which the judicious reader will have divined could only have been situated in Arcadia.  The honest god was on excellent terms with the simple people; his goats browsed freely along with theirs, and the most melodious of the rustic minstrels attributed their proficiency to his instructions.  The maidens were on a more reserved footing of intimacy—­at least so they wished it to be understood, and so it was understood, of course.  Iridion, however, decided that the occasion would warrant her incurring the risk even of a kiss, and lost no time in setting forth upon her errand, carrying her poor broken flower in its earthen vase.  It was the time of day when the god might be supposed to be arousing himself from his afternoon’s siesta.  She did not fear that his door would be closed against her, for he had no door.

The sylvan deity stood, in fact, at the entrance of his cavern, about to proceed in quest of his goats.  The appearance of Iridion operated a change in his intention, and he courteously escorted her to a seat of turf erected for the special accommodation of his fair visitors, while he placed for himself one of stone.

“Pan,” she began, “I have broken my lily.”

“That is a sad pity, child.  If it had been a reed, now, you could have made a flute of it.”

“I should not have time, Pan,” and she recounted her story.  A godlike nature cannot confound truth with falsehood, though it may mistake falsehood for truth.  Pan therefore never doubted Iridion’s strange narrative, and, having heard it to the end, observed, “You will find plenty more lilies in Elysium.”

“Common lilies, Pan; not like mine.”

“You are wrong.  The lilies of Elysium—­asphodels as they call them there—­are as immortal as the Elysians themselves.  I have seen them in Proserpine’s hair at Jupiter’s entertainment; they were as fresh as she was.  There is no doubt you might gather them by handfuls—­at least if you had any hands—­and wear them to your heart’s content, if you had but a heart.”

“That’s just what perplexes me, Pan.  It is not the dying I mind, it’s the living.  How am I to live without anything alive about me?  If you take away my hands, and my heart, and my brains, and my eyes, and my ears, and above all my tongue, what is left me to live in Elysium?”

As the maiden spake a petal detached itself from the emaciated lily, and she pressed her hand to her brow with a responsive cry of pain.

“Poor child!” said Pan compassionately, “you will feel no more pain by-and-by.”

“I suppose not, Pan, since you say so.  But if I can feel no pain, how can I feel any pleasure?

“In an incomprehensible manner,” said Pan.

“How can I feel, if I have no feeling? and what am I to do without it?”

“You can think!” replied Pan.  “Thinking (not that I am greatly given to it myself) is a much finer thing than feeling; no right-minded person doubts that.  Feeling, as I have heard Minerva say, is a property of matter, and matter, except, of course, that appertaining to myself and the other happy gods, is vile and perishable—­quite immaterial, in fact.  Thought alone is transcendent, incorruptible, and undying!”