t before Mother Ceres found out that she must seek her daughter
elsewhere. So she lighted a torch, and set forth, resolving never to come
back until Proserpina was discovered.

In her haste and trouble of mind, she quite forgot her car and the winged
dragons; or, it may be, she thought that she could follow up the search
more thoroughly on foot. At all events, this was the way in which she
began her sorrowful journey, holding her torch before her, and looking
carefully at every object along the path. And as it happened, she had not
gone far before she found one of the magnificent flowers which grew on the
shrub that Proserpina had pulled up.

"Ha!" thought Mother Ceres, examining it by torchlight. "Here is mischief
in this flower! The earth did not produce it by any help of mine, nor of
its own accord. It is the work of enchantment, and is therefore poisonous;
and perhaps it has poisoned my poor child."

But she put the poisonous flower in her bosom, not knowing whether she
might ever find any other memorial of Proserpina.

All night long, at the door of every cottage and farmhouse, Ceres knocked,
and called up the weary laborers to inquire if they had seen her child;
and they stood, gaping and half asleep, at the threshold, and answered her
pityingly, and besought her to come in and rest. At the portal of every
palace, too, she made so loud a summons that the menials hurried to throw
open the gate, thinking that it must be some great king or queen, who
would demand a banquet for supper and a stately chamber to repose in. And
when they saw only a sad and anxious woman, with a torch in her hand and a
wreath of withered poppies on her head, they spoke rudely, and sometimes
threatened to set the dogs upon her. But nobody had seen Proserpina, nor
could give Mother Ceres the least hint which way to seek her. Thus passed
the night; and still she continued her search without sitting down to
rest, or stopping to take food, or even remembering to put down the torch;
although first the rosy dawn, and then the glad light of the morning sun,
made its red flame look thin and pale. But I wonder what sort of stuff
this torch was made of; for it burned dimly through the day, and at night
was as bright as ever, and never was extinguished by the rain or wind, in
all the weary days and nights while Ceres was seeking for Proserpina.

It was not merely of human beings that she asked tidings of her daughter.
In the woods and by the stream