As for poor Echo, she pined away too. She faded and faded until nothing was left of her but her voice. There are many places where she can even now be heard. And she still has the same trick of saying to vain and foolish people whatever they say to themselves, or whatever they would like best to hear said to them. If you go where Echo is, and call out loudly, "I am beautiful!"--she will echo your very words. PART VI.--PRESUMPTION; OR, THE STORY OF PHAËTHON. There was a nymph named Clymene, who had a son so handsome that he was called Phaëthon, which means in Greek, "bright, radiant, shining," like the sun. When he grew up the goddess Venus was so charmed with him that she made him the chief ruler of all her temples, and took him into such high favor that all his friends and companions were filled with envy. One day, when Phaëthon was foolishly bragging about his own beauty and greatness, and how much he was put by a goddess above other men, one of his companions, named Epaphus, answered him, scornfully:-- "Ah! you may boast and brag, but you are a nobody after all! _My_ father was Jupiter, as everybody knows; but who was yours?" So Phaëthon went to his mother Clymene, and said:-- "Mother, they taunt me for not being the son of a god; me, who am fit to be a god myself for my grace and beauty. Who was my father? He must at least have been some great king, to be the father of such a son as I." "A king!" said Clymene. "Ay--and a greater than all kings! Tell them, from me, that your father is Phœbus Apollo, the god of the Sun!" But when he went back and told his friends, "My father is Phœbus Apollo, the god of the Sun," Epaphus and the others only scorned him and laughed at him the more. "You've caught your bragging from your mother," said they. "You're _her_ son, anyhow, whoever your father may be." When Clymene heard this, she felt terribly offended. "Then I will prove my words," said she. "Go to the Palace of the Sun and enter boldly. There you will see the Sun-god in all his glory. Demand of him to declare you to be his son openly before all the world, so that even the sons of Jupiter shall hang their heads for shame."