THE POMEGRANATE. 185 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

 THE POMEGRANATE. 



IN days when fortune-telling, so far from being under 

 the ban of a prosaic Police Act, was actually esteemed as 

 a highly creditable profession, a lovely Scythian girl, 

 seeking to know what Pate had in store for her, was 

 assured by the soothsayers whom she consulted that she 

 was destined one day to wear a crown. Happening soon 

 after to be seen by Bacchus, the susceptible god became 

 deeply enamoured of her, and she, thinking that an alli- 

 ance, even though an irregular one, with an Olympian 

 divinity would assuredly prove the most effectual means 

 of bringing the prophecy to pass, suffered herself to be 

 beguiled by his ready but delusive promises. Too soon, 

 alas ! the fickle deity wearied of her and forsook her, and 

 the hapless maid, finding her dreams of love and ambition 

 changed into a sad reality of tarnished name and fading 

 beauty, could not survive the change, and ere long died a 

 victim of disappointment and despair. Even Bacchus has 

 his serious moments, and when at length he heard of the 

 ruin he had wrought, touched with late remorse, he meta- 

 morphosed the dead maiden into a tree, placing upon the 

 fruit it bore the crown he had promised but denied to her 

 while living. Such, according to the Prench poet,* was 

 the origin of the Pomegranate; the persistent calyx of the 

 blossom of this tree not only remaining, as in the case of 

 the apple, gooseberry, &c., but, increasing in size after the 

 petals have fallen, its tube becomes the outer rind sur- 

 rounding the berries within, while its segments, sur- 

 mounting the fruit with a circle of sharply-toothed points, 

 form thus no inapt resemblance to a crown. This ensign 

 of sovereignty being, however, a quite useless part of the 

 fruit, led probably to the plant being adopted as the 



* Nicholas Rapiri, in his Plaisirs d 'un Gentillwmme, published in 1583. 



