The palace was broken up, the wrath of Venus pursued her; Ceres and all
the other deities chased her from their temples; even when she would
have drowned herself, the river god took her in his arms, and laid her
on the bank. Only Pan had pity on her, and counselled her to submit to
Venus, and do her bidding implicitly as the only hope of regaining her
lost husband.

Venus spurned her at first, and then made her a slave, setting her
first to sort a huge heap of every kind of grain in a single day. The
ants, secretly commanded by Cupid, did this for her. Next, she was to
get a lock of golden wool from a ram feeding in a valley closed in by
inaccessible rocks; but this was procured for her by an eagle; and
lastly, Venus, declaring that her own beauty had been impaired by
attendance on her injured son, commanded Psyche to visit the Infernal
Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was
on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring
her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower,
when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate
Cerberus with cakes after the approved fashion.

She thus reached Proserpine's throne, and obtained the casket, but
when she had again reached the earth, she reflected that if Venus's
beauty were impaired by anxiety, her own must have suffered far more;
and the prohibition having of course been only intended to stimulate
her curiosity, she opened the casket, out of which came the baneful
fumes of Death! Just, however, as she fell down overpowered, her
husband, who had been shut up by Venus, came to the rescue, and
finding himself unable to restore her, cried aloud to Jupiter, who
heard his prayer, reanimated Psyche, and gave her a place among the