the best of
friends as they journeyed together along the road which lies between the
wooded heights where the satyrs dance, to the hill where the Olympian
palace hides half its rosy towers among the clouds.

The Queen at first would not recognize her son; the unhappy Prince hung
his head, and the assembled courtiers laughed long and loud at the
awkward silence of the youth.

Bacchus, however, was not to be frightened by laughter, however
inextinguishable, and he pleaded his brother's cause so well that the
Queen finally consented to overlook his ugliness, and ordered that a
palace be built for him.

"All I ask," said the Prince, "is a workshop, a pair of bellows, and a
forge."

"Then you are not my son, after all," exclaimed the Queen. "You are
nothing but a poor blacksmith."

"'Tis true I am a blacksmith," he answered, "but I will show you that I
am no common workman."

Concealing her astonishment, the Queen ordered his request to be
granted, and Hephaestus, glad but silent, limped away.

Day after day found him at his work; and at length one morning, when the
King and Queen were sitting in their banqueting hall, the doors were
thrown open, and there appeared at each entrance a golden table laden
with nectar and ambrosia.

One by one the tables walked across the hall as if they had been alive,
and close behind followed Hephaestus, supported on either side by lovely
maidens, fashioned, like the tables, out of gold.

To the King he presented a golden sceptre and thunderbolts, which no one
but Zeus himself could hold.

"Thou art indeed our son," cried the King. "Choose what thou wilt, and
it shall be given thee."

Looking around the court, the eyes of Hephaestus rested at last on
Venus--a Princess so beautiful that she was supposed to have been made
of sea-foam.

"Grant me, O Zeus, that I may have this lady for my wife," said
Hephaestus.

The request was granted almost before it was asked, and the wedding
which followed was one of the most brilliant that had ever taken place
in the country of Olympus.

Venus, however, was as false as she was beautiful, and Hephaestus was
often unhappy; but he consoled himself as best he could by keeping
perpetually at work, sometimes making a brazen shield for one friend, or
forging a suit of armor for another.

So it came to pass that the lame boy Hephaestus, exiled from his father's
court on account of his ugliness, became the world-renowned royal
blacksmith, honor