"Love cannot live where there is no trust."

2. There was a king who had three daughters, the most beautiful of
whom was Psyche. She was so beautiful that men worshipped her
instead of Venus.

3. Venus was enraged by this and sent her son Cupid to make the
girl fall in love with a horrible beast.

4. Venus showed Psyche to Cupid. as he looked upon her it was as if
he had shot one of his arrows into his own heart. But he said
nothing to his mother.

5. Psyche did not fall in love with a horrible
wretch, she did not fall in love at all. No one
fell in love with her. Men were content to look
and wonder and worship—and then pass on
to marry someone else. Psyche, the all-
beautiful, sat sad and solitary, only admired,
never loved. It seemed that no man wanted
her. Apollo- an oracle, told her father that his
daughter was doomed in a prophecy. He
commanded the girl to be left at the edge of a
cliff. Psyche waited there for her doom.

6. But a soft wind lifted her and took her to an enormous beautiful
house. Spirits spoke within it and told her that they were her
servants.

7. The elder sisters saw its surpassing treasures; bitter envy took possession of
them and a devouring curiosity as to who was the lord of all this
magnificence and their sister's husband. They convinced her that her
husband might be a hideous beast.

8. "Love cannot live where there is no trust." -Cupid

9. Psyche who is willing to do everything went to his mother Venus
to ask for forgiveness. She, being furious of her made her do
several tasks:
First Task:
Venus took a great quantity
of the smallest of the seeds;
wheat and poppy and millet
and so on and mixed them all
together in a heap.
Psyche was heartbroken and
could not start her task, but a
group of ants performed the
task for her. And mass lay all
ordered, every seed with its
kind.
This was what Venus found
when she came back, and
very angry she was to see it.
Second Task:
The next morning, she
devised another task. Down
the riverbank, where the
bushes grow thick, are sheep
with fleeces of gold. Psyche
must fetch some of their
shining wool. And Psyche
accomplished this by pulling
the wool from the sharp
briars.
Venus received it with evil
smile. And said that,
someone helped her.

10. Third Task:
Next, Venus made her get a
vile of black water from terrible
which is called hateful, the
River Styx.
This time her savior was an
eagle, who poised on his great
wings beside her, seized the
flask from her with his beak,
and brought it back to her full
of the black water.
Last Task:
Venus kept on and one
cannot but accuse
Psyche of some
stupidity. The only
effect of all that had
happened was to
make her try again.
Venus gave Psyche a
box which she was to
carry to the
underworld and ask
Persephone
(Proserpine) to fill
with some of her
beauty.

11. When she came back from the
underworld, she opened the box
and fell into a deep sleep. Cupid
woke her and asked Jupiter to call
an assembly of the gods. Zeus
made Psyche into a deity and
Cupid married her. Psyche's name
means soul and Cupid means
love; this tale represents the union
of love and soul beyond the
wishes of Venus, who represents
lust.

12. The End 