Scarcely able to believe it could be true, Midas hurried away to test the reality of his good fortune. An oak grew by the roadside. He took hold of a small twig; it was a twig of gold. He picked up a clod of earth; it was no longer clay, but a huge nugget. Passing through a cornfield, all the ears that brushed against his hand became ears of gold. Plucking an apple from a tree, it was at once like to the golden apple that Paris gave to Venus. When he reached his palace and put his hand upon the doorpost, the wood turned yellow and glistened at his touch. The basin in which he washed his hands became a golden bowl, filled to the brim with gold-dust. "Now, indeed," he cried with joy, "wealth and power are mine. My riches will be endless. Thanks be given to the gods for this most wonderful and precious of all gifts. What in the world is better than gold?" While he was thus rejoicing, his servants entered and spread the table for a banquet. He seated himself and took a piece of bread in his hand. But it was no longer bread; it was hard, solid gold. He seized a goblet of wine, but to no purpose; he could not quench his thirst with a stream of gold! Too late he saw his folly. The richest man on earth, he was doomed to die of hunger and thirst. Nothing on earth was so useless to him as his gold! Raising his hands towards heaven, he implored the pardon of the gods. "Have mercy on me, for I repent me of my greed; have pity and deliver me from this awful curse!" Bacchus, seeing that he was cured of his sordid folly, took pity on him, and showed him how the baneful gift could be got rid of. "Go to Sardis," said he, "and track the river to its well-head. Plunge thy head beneath the bubbling spring, and purge thyself from the curse." The king hastened to bathe in the spring, and so gained relief: the golden virtue left the human body and entered into the water. And even now the sands of Pactolus glitter with grains of gold-dust. * * * * *