Poor Mother Ceres! It is melancholy to think of her, pursuing her toilsome way, all alone, and holding up that never-dying torch, the flame of which seemed an emblem of the grief and hope that burned together in her heart.
So much did she suffer, that, though her aspect had been quite youthful when her troubles began, she grew to look like an elderly person in a very brief time.She cared not how she was dressed, nor had she ever thought of flinging away the wreath of withered poppies, which she put on the very morning of Proserpina's disappearance.She roamed about in so wild a way, and with her hair so disheveled, that people took her for some distracted creature, and never dreamed that this was Mother Ceres, who had the oversight of every seed which the husbandman planted.Nowadays, however, she gave herself no trouble about seed time nor harvest, but left the farmers to take care of their own affairs, and the crops to fade or flourish, as the case might be.There was nothing, now, in which Ceres seemed to feel an interest, unless when she saw children at play, or gathering flowers along the wayside.Then, indeed, she would stand and gaze at them with tears in her eyes.The children, too, appeared to have a sympathy with her grief, and would cluster themselves in a little group about her knees, and look up wistfully in her face; and Ceres, after giving them a kiss all round, would lead them to their homes, and advise their mothers never to let them stray out of sight.
"For if they do," said she, "it may happen to you, as it has to me, that the iron-hearted King Pluto will take a liking to your darlings, and snatch them up in his chariot, and carry them away."One day, during her pilgrimage in quest of the entrance to Pluto's kingdom, she came to the palace of King Cereus, who reigned at Eleusis.Ascending a lofty flight of steps, she entered the portal, and found the royal household in very great alarm about the queen's baby.The infant, it seems, was sickly (being troubled with its teeth, I suppose), and would take no food, and was all the time moaning with pain.The queen--her name was Metanira--was desirous of funding a nurse; and when she beheld a woman of matronly aspect coming up the palace steps, she thought, in her own mind, that here was the very person whom she needed.So Queen Metanira ran to the door, with the poor wailing baby in her arms, and besought Ceres to take charge of it, or, at least, to tell her what would do it good.
"Will you trust the child entirely to me?" asked Ceres.
"Yes, and gladly, too," answered the queen, "if you will devote all your time to him.For I can see that you have been a mother.""You are right," said Ceres."I once had a child of my own.
Well; I will be the nurse of this poor, sickly boy.But beware, I warn you, that you do not interfere with any kind of treatment which I may judge proper for him.If you do so, the poor infant must suffer for his mother's folly."Then she kissed the child, and it seemed to do him good; for he smiled and nestled closely into her bosom.
So Mother Ceres set her torch in a corner (where it kept burning all the while), and took up her abode in the palace of King Cereus, as nurse to the little Prince Demophoon.She treated him as if he were her own child, and allowed neither the king nor the queen to say whether he should be bathed in warm or cold water, or what he should eat, or how often he should take the air, or when he should be put to bed.You would hardly believe me, if I were to tell how quickly the baby prince got rid of his ailments, and grew fat, and rosy, and strong, and how he had two rows of ivory teeth in less time than any other little fellow, before or since.Instead of the palest, and wretchedest, and puniest imp in the world (as his own mother confessed him to be, when Ceres first took him in charge), he was now a strapping baby, crowing, laughing, kicking up his heels, and rolling from one end of the room to the other.All the good women of the neighborhood crowded to the palace, and held up their hands, in unutterable amazement, at the beauty and wholesomeness of this darling little prince.
Their wonder was the greater, because he was never seen to taste any food; not even so much as a cup of milk.
"Pray, nurse," the queen kept saying, "how is it that you make the child thrive so?""I was a mother once," Ceres always replied; "and having nursed my own child, I know what other children need."But Queen Metanira, as was very natural, had a great curiosity to know precisely what the nurse did to her child.One night, therefore, she hid herself in the chamber where Ceres and the little prince were accustomed to sleep.There was a fire in the chimney, and it had now crumbled into great coals and embers, which lay glowing on the hearth, with a blaze flickering up now and then, and flinging a warm and ruddy light upon the walls.
Ceres sat before the hearth with the child in her lap, and the firelight making her shadow dance upon the ceiling overhead.
She undressed the little prince, and bathed him all over with some fragrant liquid out of a vase.The next thing she did was to rake back the red embers, and make a hollow place among them, just where the backlog had been.At last, while the baby was crowing, and clapping its fat little hands, and laughing in the nurse's face (just as you may have seen your little brother or sister do before going into its warm bath), Ceres suddenly laid him, all naked as he was, in the hollow among the red-hot embers.She then raked the ashes over him, and turned quietly away.
