many days she lamented, but at last the fulfilment of the divine
precept is urgent upon her, and the company make ready to conduct the
maiden to her deadly bridal. And now the nuptial torch gathers dark
smoke and ashes: the pleasant sound of the pipe is changed into a
cry: the marriage hymn concludes in a sorrowful wailing: below her
yellow wedding-veil the bride shook away her tears; insomuch that the
whole city was afflicted together at the ill-luck of the stricken
house.

But the mandate of the god impelled the hapless Psyche to her fate,
and, these solemnities [65] being ended, the funeral of the living
soul goes forth, all the people following. Psyche, bitterly weeping,
assists not at her marriage but at her own obsequies, and while the
parents hesitate to accomplish a thing so unholy the daughter cries
to them: "Wherefore torment your luckless age by long weeping? This
was the prize of my extraordinary beauty! When all people celebrated
us with divine honours, and in one voice named the New Venus, it was
then ye should have wept for me as one dead. Now at last I
understand that that one name of Venus has been my ruin. Lead me and
set me upon the appointed place. I am in haste to submit to that
well-omened marriage, to behold that goodly spouse. Why delay the
coming of him who was born for the destruction of the whole world?"

She was silent, and with firm step went on the way. And they
proceeded to the appointed place on a steep mountain, and left there
the maiden alone, and took their way homewards dejectedly. The
wretched parents, in their close-shut house, yielded themselves to
perpetual night; while to Psyche, fearful and trembling and weeping
sore upon the mountain-top, comes the gentle Zephyrus. He lifts her
mildly, and, with vesture afloat on either side, bears her by his own