This is the story of Cupid and Psyche, of which there is nothing more to tell except that Psyche's troubles had a very happy and glorious ending indeed. For Jupiter, to make her a fitting wife for Cupid, received her into heaven, and on her arrival gave her with his own hands a goblet of nectar to drink--the wine of the gods, which makes all who taste of it immortal. Even Venus became reconciled to her, and the wedding-feast of Cupid and Psyche is one of the most famous festivals in the whole history of the skies. * * * * * I said a little way back that most of these stories have some sort of meaning, and people have found more meaning in the story of Psyche than in most of them. "Psyche" is the Greek for "soul," and I have already told you that "Cupid" means "love." So the story may show how the soul of man is loved by heaven; but how it has to pass through many sufferings and trials, and at last through death, before it reaches immortal happiness. "Psyche" also means "butterfly," and Psyche herself, after she was received into heaven, always appears in pictures with a butterfly's wings. It seems curious at first that the same word means "soul" and "butterfly"; but it is not so curious when one thinks a little of the story. Just as the caterpillar that crawls on the earth seems to die when it becomes a chrysalis and then rises again as a winged butterfly, so man, bound down to earth like a caterpillar, seems to die, and then lives again, only changed. In some very old pictures you may see a butterfly flying out from between a man's lips. That means that he is dying, and that his "Psyche," his "soul" or "butterfly," is leaving him. MERCURY AND IRIS. Very often, in these stories, you have met with Mercury, and have heard that he was Jupiter's chief messenger. The office he held made him so busy with all the affairs of heaven, earth, and Hades, that there is scarcely a story without Mercury in it; and it is therefore time to know something more about him. * * * * * Now you must know that the people who, ages ago, made these stories about the gods and goddesses in whom they believed, thought that the earth (which you know to be a globe) was a large island surrounded by a boundless ocean. The sky--so they imagined--was a solid dome, on which the sun, moon, and stars made their various journeys. Every morning Phœbus drove the chariot of the Sun forth from the stable beyond the ocean in the east, across the blue dome, till it sank beyond the western ocean, and then passed underground back to the eastern stable, so as to be ready to start again. The Moon, that is to say, the chariot of Diana, also had her proper course across the dome, and so had every planet and star. And this dome, or sky, with all its wonders, was supported on the shoulders of Atlas, a gigantic Titan, condemned to this task (some say) for having helped the giants in their war against the gods.