The stone pillars of his palace as he brushed past them on
entering, blazed like a sunset sky. The gods had not deceived him.
Midas had the Golden Touch. Joyously he strode into the palace and
commanded a feast to be prepared--a feast worthy of an occasion so
magnificent.

But when Midas, with the healthy appetite of the peasant-born, would
have eaten largely of the savoury food that his cooks prepared, he
found that his teeth only touched roast kid to turn it into a slab of
gold, that garlic lost its flavour and became gritty as he chewed,
that rice turned into golden grains, and curdled milk became a dower
fit for a princess, entirely unnegotiable for the digestion of man.
Baffled and miserable, Midas seized his cup of wine, but the red wine
had become one with the golden vessel that held it; nor could he
quench his thirst, for even the limpid water from the fountain was
melted gold when it touched his dry lips. Only for a very few days was
Midas able to bear the affliction of his wealth. There was nothing now
for him to live for. He could buy the whole earth if he pleased, but
even children shrank in terror from his touch, and hungry and thirsty
and sick at heart he wearily dragged along his weighty robes of gold.
Gold was power, he knew well, yet of what worth was gold while he
starved? Gold could not buy him life and health and happiness.

In despair, at length he cried to the god who had given him the gift
that he hated.

"Save me, O Bacchus!" he said. "A witless one am I, and the folly of
my desire has been my undoing. Take away from me the accursed Golden
Touch, and faithfully and well shall I serve thee forever."

Then Bacchus, very pitiful for him, told Midas to go to Sardis, the
chief city of his worshippers, and to trace to its source the river
upon which it was built. And in that pool, when he found it, he was to
plunge his head, and so he would, for evermore, be freed from the
Golden Touch.

It was a long journey that Midas then took, and a weary and a starving
man was he when at length he reached the spring where the river
Pactolus had its source. He crawled forward, and timidly plunged in
his head and shoulders. Almost he expected to feel the harsh grit of
golden water, but instead there was the joy he had known as a peasant
boy when he laved his face and drank at a cool spring when his day's
toil was ended. And when he raised his face from the pool, he knew
that his hateful power had passed from h