What mystery is Love! The arrows, torch, and youth of Cupid: these are symbols rich and deep. My purpose here is not to plumb them, but to merely tell, in my own way, the story of his blinding, from its cause to consequences. (Whether these were bad or good I leave to lovers to decide.)
The boy and Folly were at play one day when there arose between them a dispute, which Love suggested calmly they refer to arbitration. Folly, losing all her patience, thumped him fiercely on the head. His sight was thereupon extinguished like a candle snuffed.
His mother, Venus, like a mother, poured out lamentations spiced with vengeful rage. She made the heavens and the hells resound with cries; to Jupiter and Nemesis and Pluto—every god, in fact—she pled for justice. “Love will need a cane to walk!” No punishment could be sufficient where no reparation could repair the damage done, she said.
The gods deliberated, weighing plaintiff’s woes against the public weal. And after much discussion, that supremest court decreed that, for the crime of rendering Love uneyed, Folly should thenceforth serve for Love as guide.