The contrast is even more rasping when we remember that the tale is not put into the mouth of a girl gazing dreamily into the glowing coals on the hearth, or of some elegant reciter amusing a social group in a Roman drawing-room or garden, but of a grizzled hag who is maid of all work in a robbers’ cave.  She tells it to divert the mind of a lovely young bride held for ransom.  It begins like a modern fairy tale, with a great king and queen who had “three daughters of remarkable beauty,” the loveliest being the peerless Psyche.  Even Venus becomes envious of the honors paid to Psyche’s charms, and summons Cupid to wing one of his shafts which shall cause her “to be seized with the most burning love for the lowest of mankind,” so as to disgrace and ruin her.  Cupid undertakes the task, but instead falls in love with her himself.  Meanwhile an oracle from Apollo, instigated by Venus, dooms her to be sacrificed in marriage to some unknown aerial monster, who must find her alone on a naked rock.  She is so placed, awaiting her doom in terror; but the zephyrs bear her away to the palace of Love.  Cupid hides her there, lest Venus wreak vengeance on them both:  and there, half terrified but soon soothed, in the darkness of night she hears from Cupid that he, her husband, is no monster, but the fairest of immortals.  He will not disclose his identity, however; not only so, but he tenderly warns her that she must not seek to discover it, or even to behold him, till he gives permission, unless she would bring hopeless disaster on both.  Nor must she confide in her two sisters, lest their unwisdom or sudden envy cause harm.

The simple-hearted and affectionate girl, however, in her craving for sympathy, cannot resist the temptation to boast of her happiness to her sisters.  She invites them to pass a day in her magnificent new home, and tells contradictory stories about her husband.  Alas! they depart bitterly envious, and plotting to make her ruin her own joy out of fear and curiosity.]

“What are we to say, sister, [said one to the other] of the monstrous lies of that silly creature?  At one time her husband is a young man, with the down just showing itself on his chin; at another he is of middle age, and his hair begins to be silvered with gray....  You may depend upon it, sister, either the wretch has invented these lies to deceive us, or else she does not know herself how her husband looks.  Whichever is the case, she must be deprived of these riches as soon as possible.  And yet, if she is really ignorant of her husband’s appearance, she must no doubt have married a god, and who knows what will happen?  At all events, if—­which heaven forbid—­she does become the mother of a divine infant, I shall instantly hang myself.  Meanwhile let us return to our parents, and devise some scheme based on what we have just been saying.”