“Eros, my own! Eros, my darling! My cherub! surely you wish not to offend me, and rest gazing at others. Cupid! speak!”
She had called him by his later and modern name; and again the natural consequence, the final change. Of course he spoke. Being what he was as Cupid in modern conception, he could not do otherwise, he could not avoid conversation. Also, his youthful wings commenced to flutter; and his beauty, never lost since the beginning, made him, from the worldly point of view, adorable.
But, alas! not as Eros, simply the modern fascinating Cupid. Sad, also! no longer the Aphrodite of early times, but the Roman Venus still in vogue; Venus who at once asserted herself by giving orders to her attendant Cherub. The Cherub carried his bow and arrows, and the torch of Zeus grew very dim as Venus spake:
“Cupid! you certainly are clever! but you gave me such a shock! I thought you never would wake up, or speak to me again!”
The Cherub fluttered about her person not unlike a butterfly to fascinate by graceful movement; the poetry of motion, an admirable motif for decoration; activity, new sensations; no more, no less.
“Cupid! if ever that occurs again, you will be caught and imprisoned, imprisoned within a picture gallery, and there you will remain. Zeus help you! Naughty boy!”
The beautiful winged youth, the spritely Cupid, at once answered:
“I’ll girdle the earth in forty minutes. Catch me, who catch can.”
Venus smiled. Some would have thought this smile “bewitching,” others could have called her expression “a cynical smile.” But it soon faded away, and in no degree prevented her proceeding at once to the object of their interview.
“Cupid! there is going to be an engagement.”