“Foolish woman,” answered Ceres, “did you not promise to intrust this poor infant entirely to me?  You little know the mischief you have done him.  Had you left him to my care, he would have grown up like a child of celestial birth, endowed with superhuman strength and intelligence, and would have lived forever.  Do you imagine that earthly children are to become immortal without being tempered to it in the fiercest heat of the fire?  But you have ruined your own son.  For though he will be a strong man and a hero in his day, yet, on account of your folly, he will grow old, and finally die, like the sons of other women.  The weak tenderness of his mother has cost the poor boy an immortality.  Farewell.”

Saying these words, she kissed the little prince Demophoeon, and sighed to think what he had lost, and took her departure without heeding Queen Metanira, who entreated her to remain, and cover up the child among the hot embers as often as she pleased.  Poor baby!  He never slept so warmly again.

While she dwelt in the king’s palace, Mother Ceres had been so continually occupied with taking care of the young prince, that her heart was a little lightened of its grief for Proserpina.  But now, having nothing else to busy herself about, she became just as wretched as before.  At length, in her despair, she came to the dreadful resolution that not a stalk of grain, nor a blade of grass, not a potato, nor a turnip, nor any other vegetable that was good for man or beast to eat, should be suffered to grow until her daughter were restored.  She even forbade the flowers to bloom, lest somebody’s heart should be cheered by their beauty.

Now, as not so much as a head of asparagus ever presumed to poke itself out of the ground, without the especial permission of Ceres, you may conceive what a terrible calamity had here fallen upon the earth.  The husbandmen ploughed and planted as usual; but there lay the rich black furrows, all as barren as a desert of sand.  The pastures looked as brown in the sweet month of June as ever they did in chill November.  The rich man’s broad acres and the cottager’s small garden-patch were equally blighted.  Every little girl’s flower-bed showed nothing but dry stalks.  The old people shook their white heads, and said that the earth had grown aged like themselves, and was no longer capable of wearing the warm smile of summer on its face.  It was really piteous to see the poor starving cattle and sheep, how they followed behind Ceres, lowing and bleating, as if their instinct taught them to expect help from her; and everybody that was acquainted with her power besought her to have mercy on the human race, and, at all events, to let the grass grow.  But Mother Ceres, though naturally of an affectionate disposition, was now inexorable.

“Never,” said she.  “If the earth is ever again to see any verdure, it must first grow along the path which my daughter will tread in coming back to me.”