They thus induced her to accept a lamp
with which to gaze on him when asleep. She obeyed them, then
beholding the exquisite beauty of the sleeping god of love, she hung
over him in rapture till a drop of the hot oil fell on his shoulder
and awoke him. He sprang up, sorrowfully reproached her with having
ruined herself and him, and flew away, letting her fall as she clung
to him.
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.
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