The child had declared, as you may remember, that she would not taste a mouthful of food as long as she should be compelled to remain in King Pluto’s palace.  How she contrived to maintain her resolution, and at the same time to keep herself tolerably plump and rosy is more than I can explain; but some young ladies, I am given to understand, possess the faculty of living on air, and Proserpina seems to have possessed it too.  At any rate, it was now six months since she left the outside of the earth; and not a morsel, so far as the attendants were able to testify, had yet passed between her teeth.  This was the more creditable to Proserpina, inasmuch as King Pluto had caused her to be tempted day after day with all manner of sweetmeats, and richly preserved fruits, and delicacies of every sort, such as young people are generally most fond of.  But her good mother had often told her of the hurtfulness of these things; and for that reason alone, if there had been no other, she would have resolutely refused to taste them.

All this time, being of a cheerful and active disposition, the little damsel was not quite so unhappy as you may have supposed.  The immense palace had a thousand rooms, and was full of beautiful and wonderful objects.  There was a never-ceasing gloom, it is true, which half hid itself among the innumerable pillars, gliding before the child as she wandered among them, and treading stealthily behind her in the echo of her footsteps.  Neither was all the dazzle of the precious stones, which flamed with their own light, worth one gleam of natural sunshine; nor could the most brilliant of the many-coloured gems, which Proserpina had for playthings, vie with the simple beauty of the flowers she used to gather.  But still, wherever the girl went, among those gilded halls and chambers, it seemed as if she carried nature and sunshine along with her, and as if she scattered dewy blossoms on her right hand and on her left.  After Proserpina came, the palace was no longer the same abode of stately artifice and dismal magnificence that it had before been.  The inhabitants all felt this, and King Pluto more than any of them.

“My own little Proserpina,” he used to say, “I wish you could like me a little better.  We gloomy and cloudy-natured persons have often as warm hearts at bottom as those of a more cheerful character.  If you would only stay with me of your own accord, it would make me happier than the possession of a hundred such palaces as this.”

“Ah,” said Proserpina, “you should have tried to make me like you before carrying me off.  And the best thing you can do now is to let me go again.  Then I might remember you sometimes, and think that you were as kind as you knew how to be.  Perhaps, too, one day or other, I might come back, and pay you a visit.”

“No, no,” answered Pluto, with his gloomy smile, “I will not trust you for that.  You are too fond of living in the broad daylight, and gathering flowers.  What an idle and childish taste that is!  Are not these gems, which I have ordered to be dug for you, and which are richer than any in my crown—­are they not prettier than a violet?”