“Hush!  Say not such a word!” answered Ceres indignantly.  “What is there to gratify her heart?  What are all the splendors you speak of, without affection?  I must have her back again.  Will you go with me, Phoebus, to demand my daughter of this wicked Pluto?”

“Pray excuse me,” replied Phoebus, with an elegant obeisance.  “I certainly wish you success, and regret that my own affairs are so immediately pressing that I cannot have the pleasure of attending you.  Besides, I am not upon the best of terms with King Pluto.  To tell you the truth, his three-headed mastiff would never let me pass the gateway; for I should be compelled to take a sheaf of sunbeams along with me, and those, you know, are forbidden things in Pluto’s kingdom.”

“Ah, Phoebus,” said Ceres, with bitter meaning in her words, “you have a harp instead of a heart.  Farewell.”

“Will not you stay a moment,” asked Phoebus, “and hear me turn the pretty and touching story of Proserpina into extemporary verses?”

But Ceres shook her head, and hastened away, along with Hecate.  Phoebus (who, as I have told you, was an exquisite poet) forthwith began to make an ode about the poor mother’s grief; and, if we were to judge of his sensibility by this beautiful production, he must have been endowed with a very tender heart.  But when a poet gets into the habit of using his heartstrings to make chords for his lyre, he may thrum upon them as much as he will, without any great pain to himself.  Accordingly, though Phoebus sang a very sad song, he was as merry all the while as were the sunbeams amid which he dwelt.

Poor Mother Ceres had now found out what had become of her daughter, but was not a whit happier than before.  Her case, on the contrary, looked more desperate than ever.  As long as Proserpina was above ground there might have been hopes of regaining her.  But now that the poor child was shut up within the iron gates of the king of the mines, at the threshold of which lay the three-headed Cerberus, there seemed no possibility of her ever making her escape.  The dismal Hecate, who loved to take the darkest view of things, told Ceres that she had better come with her to the cavern, and spend the rest of her life in being miserable.  Ceres answered that Hecate was welcome to go back thither herself, but that, for her part, she would wander about the earth in quest of the entrance to King Pluto’s dominions.  And Hecate took her at her word, and hurried back to her beloved cave, frightening a great many little children with a glimpse of her dog’s face, as she went.