CUPID AND PSYCHE

To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of which Lohengrin is a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are gods and should be accepted as such.  If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that Cupid and Psyche is a story of “modern” romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it.  It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love—­or conjugal affection either—­it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded.  Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty.  The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship.  Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated.  Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (amore flagrantissimo) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth.  Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle.  Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother’s orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (jamque aderat ignobilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat).

Now follow some months in which Psyche is neither maiden nor wife.  Even if they had been properly married there would have been no opportunity for the development or manifestation of supersensual conjugal attachment, for all this time Psyche is never allowed even to see her lover; and when an opportunity arises for her to show her devotion to him she fails utterly to rise to the occasion.  One night he informs her that her two sisters, who are unhappily married, are trying to find her, and he warns her seriously not to heed them in any way, should they succeed in their efforts.  She promises, but spends the whole of the next day weeping and wailing because she is locked up in a beautiful prison, unable to see her sisters—­very unlike a loving modern girl on her honeymoon, whose one desire is to be alone with her beloved, giving him a monopoly of her affection