But neither could Pan tell her what had become of
Proserpina, any better than the rest of these wild people.
And thus Mother Ceres went wandering about for nine long days and
nights, finding no trace of Proserpina, unless it were now and then a
withered flower; and these she picked up and put in her bosom, because
she fancied that they might have fallen from her poor child's hand. All
day she travelled onward through the hot sun; and at night, again, the
flame of the torch would redden and gleam along the pathway, and she
continued her search by its light, without ever sitting down to rest.
On the tenth day, she chanced to espy the mouth of a cavern, within
which (though it was bright noon everywhere else) there would have been
only a dusky twilight; but it so happened that a torch was burning
there. It flickered, and struggled with the duskiness, but could not
half light up the gloomy cavern with all its melancholy glimmer. Ceres
was resolved to leave no spot without a search; so she peeped into the
entrance of the cave, and lighted it up a little more by holding her own
torch before her. In so doing, she caught a glimpse of what seemed to be
a woman, sitting on the brown leaves of the last autumn, a great heap of
which had been swept into the cave by the wind. This woman (if woman it
were) was by no means so beautiful as many of her sex; for her head,
they tell me, was shaped very much like a dog's, and, by way of
ornament, she wore a wreath of snakes around it.
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