their mirth, flung among them a golden apple, and departed with looks
that boded ill. Some one picked up the strange missile and read its
inscription: _For the Fairest_; and at once discussion arose among the
goddesses. They were all eager to claim the prize, but only three
persisted.

Venus, the very goddess of beauty, said that it was hers by right; but
Juno could not endure to own herself less fair than another, and even
Athena coveted the palm of beauty as well as of wisdom, and would not
give it up! Discord had indeed come to the wedding-feast. Not one of
the gods dared to decide so dangerous a question,--not Zeus himself,
--and the three rivals were forced to choose a judge among mortals.

Now there lived on Mount Ida, near the city of Troy, a certain young
shepherd by the name of Paris. He was as comely as Ganymede
himself,--that Trojan youth whom Zeus, in the shape of an eagle, seized
and bore away to Olympus, to be a cup-bearer to the gods. Paris, too,
was a Trojan of royal birth, but like Oedipus he had been left on the
mountain in his infancy, because the Oracle had foretold that he would
be the death of his kindred and the ruin of his country. Destiny saved
and nurtured him to fulfil that prophecy. He grew up as a shepherd and
tended his flocks on the mountain, but his beauty held the favor of all
the wood-folk there and won the heart of the nymph Oenone.

To him, at last, the three goddesses entrusted the judgment and the
golden apple. Juno first stood before him in all her glory as Queen of
gods and men, and attended by her favorite peacocks as gorgeous to see
as royal fan-bearers.

"Use but the judgment of a prince, Paris," she said, "and I will give