"So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing that is not," he said to himself in glee—knowing that the box he would give to Pandora would not bear more confused and complex woes to the hapless earth than this gift of an ear to man.
But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears were wanted, he only made one.
Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, and resolved to avenge the theft of his milk-white herds which had led him such a weary chase through Tempe.
Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it, and strung across it a silver string from his own lyre, and with it gave to man one ear by which the voice of Truth should reach the brain.
"You have spoilt all my sport," said the boy Hermes, angry and weeping.
"Nay," said the elder brother with a smile. "Be comforted. The brazen trumpets will be sure to drown the whisper from the well, and ten thousand mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice your ear instead of mine."
Women never like one another, except now and then an old woman and a young woman like you and me. They are good to one another amongst the poor, you say! Oh, that I don't know anything about. They may be. Barbarians always retain the savage virtues. In Society women hate one another—all the more because in Society they have to smile in each other's faces every night of their lives. Only think what that is, my dear!—to grudge each other's conquests, to grudge each other's diamonds, to study each other's dress, to watch each other's wrinkles, to outshine each other always on every possible occasion, big or little, and yet always to be obliged to give pet names to each other, and visit each other with elaborate ceremonial—why, women must hate each other! Society makes them. Your poor folks, I daresay, in the midst of their toiling and moiling, and scrubbing and scraping, and starving and begging, do do each other kindly turns, and put bread in each other's mouths now and then, because they can scratch each other's eyes out, and call each other hussies in the streets, any minute they like, in the most open manner. But in Society women's entire life is a struggle for precedence, precedence in everything—beauty, money, rank, success, dress, everything. We have to smother hate under smiles, and envy under compliment, and while we are dying to say "You hussy," like the women in the streets, we are obliged, instead of boxing her ears, to kiss her on both cheeks, and cry, "Oh, my dearest—how charming of you—so kind!" Only think what all that repression means. You laugh? Oh, you very clever people always do laugh at these things. But you must study Society, or suffer from it, sooner or later. If you don't always strive to go out before everybody, life will end in everybody going out before you, everybody—down to the shoeblack!
"Read!" echoed the old wise man with scorn. "O child, what use is that? Read!—the inland dweller reads of the sea, and thinks he knows it, and believes it to be as a magnified duck-pond, and no more. Can he tell anything of the light and the shade; of the wave and the foam; of the green that is near, of the blue that is far; of the opaline changes, now pure as a dove's throat, now warm as a flame; of the great purple depths and the fierce blinding storm; and the delight and the fear, and the hurricane rising like a horse snorting for war, and all that is known to man who goes down to the great deep in ships? Passion and the sea are like one another. Words shall not tell them, nor colour portray them. The kiss that burns, and the salt spray that stings—let the poet excel and the painter endeavour, yet the best they can do shall say nothing to the woman without a lover; and the landsman who knows not the sea. If you would live—love. You will live in an hour a lifetime; and you will wonder how you bore your life before. But as an artist all will be over with you—that I think."