5th episode

Psyche's sisters plot their plan
The order was immediately carried out, and the good little sisters, returning home consumed by the gall of envy, began to chatter endlessly.
One of them burst out, saying: "This is what Fortune is like: blind, cruel, unjust! Will she be happy now that she has managed to assign us such a different fate, even though we are daughters of the same parents? And that we two, the elder sisters, have been given as slaves to foreign husbands and must lead the life of exiles, far from our father's house and our own country, while she, the youngest, who with her birth dried up our mother's aging womb, has acquired so much wealth that she doesn't even know how to enjoy it, and has taken as a husband one who seems like a god!
But have you seen, my sister, what marvelous jewels in that house, what splendor of fabrics, what glitter of gems, how much gold she walks on everywhere? And if her husband is as handsome as she says, there is no woman in the world happier than she. Indeed, it may be that in the long run, habit will strengthen affection and that in the end that god who is her husband will make her a goddess too! But damn it, it's just like that! Already she poses and behaves like a goddess! Already she aims high, already now, even though she is a woman, she breathes divinity around her, she who has voices like handmaidens and commands even the winds. But I, poor wretch, have been blessed with a husband older than my father, bald as a pumpkin, more childish than a boy, who knows only how to keep the house locked with bars and chains!
And the other: "I'm even worse off, having to put up with a husband who's all hunched over and stiff with arthritis, and who for that reason very rarely feels like making love. I have to rub his crooked, rock-hard fingers all the time, and ruin my delicate little hands with stinking plasters, dirty bandages, and disgusting poultices, not playing the part of a kind little wife, but reducing myself to toiling like a nurse.
But to tell you the truth, I'm telling you how I feel. It seems to me that you endure this wretched life with too much patience, I would say with the resignation of a slave; I, on the other hand, can no longer bear that such good fortune happened to one who is unworthy of it. Don't you remember with what arrogance, what pride she treated us, and how she showed her pride by displaying all her possessions before our eyes, and then what little she then reluctantly tossed out to us as gifts? Yet she has no shortage of riches! And then, annoyed by our presence, she made us slip away, or rather, she made us blow, whistle in the wind!
I'm not a woman, and I'm not even alive, if I can't bring her down from the heights of her wealth. If, like me, you feel this burning insult, let's find an effective solution together.
To begin with, let's not show these things we take from there to our parents or anyone else; in fact, let's not even let them know she's alive. What we've seen is already too much for her parents and the entire world to know of her happiness. For those whose happiness no one knows aren't truly happy.
Psyche must learn once and for all that we are older sisters, not slaves. And now let's go back to our husbands and our poor, but at least modest homes. In the meantime, let's think carefully about what to do, then we'll come back more decisively and punish her pride."
This evil plan seems good to the two wicked women, and so, hiding all the precious gifts they've received, with their hair disheveled and their faces scratched, as they truly would have deserved, they hypocritically begin to cry again. Thus, after having exacerbated their parents' pain and despair, they return home, swollen with rage, and meanwhile they search for a way to concoct a deceitful and wicked plan, indeed a real crime, against their innocent sister.

New warnings to Psyche
Meanwhile, that unknown husband again warned Psyche in his nocturnal conversations: "Do you not see what great danger looms over you? Fortune is threatening you from above, and if you do not take precautions in time, she will soon attack you directly. Those two infamous women are laying a horrible trap for you by every means, the culmination of which is this: they want to persuade you to see my face, and you know, because I have told you before, that if you see me, you will never be able to see me again. Therefore, if soon those two wicked witches come to you again, and I am sure they will, armed with these malicious suggestions, do not speak to them on any account. But if, because of your simplicity and your good heart, you are unable to do this, at least be careful not to listen to or answer anything that concerns your husband. Soon our family will increase, because this womb of yours, still of a child, carries another child: he will be a god, if you can keep our secrets, but he will be a mere mortal if you betray them."
Psyche, filled with joy at this announcement, began clapping her hands at the thought of a divine son, exalted by that glorious promise and delighted in the dignity of being a mother. She anxiously counted the days and months that followed one after the other, and in her inexperience with the new burden of pregnancy, she marveled that so small a puncture could cause her belly to swell more and more each day.
But by now those two devilish and pestilential furies, who exuded venom like vipers, had set sail with a haste that heralded a storm.
Then again that occasional husband admonished her Psyche: "Behold the last day, the final moment: the hostile sex and the enemy blood have already taken up arms, have moved the battlefield, have drawn up the ranks, have blown the trumpets; now with sword in hand your infamous sisters aim at your throat.
What ruin is upon us, sweetest Psyche! Have mercy on me and yourself, and by religiously maintaining silence, save your home, your husband, and this child of ours from the misfortune of this disaster that is upon us!
And those wicked women whom you can no longer call sisters, because with their mortal hatred they have trampled upon the ties of blood, you must not see them, you must not listen to them, when like the Sirens they will make their fatal voices resound from the top of the cliff."
Psyche answered him through tears: "It seems to me that I have long since proven to you that I am faithful and discreet, and even now more than ever you will appreciate my steadfastness of spirit. Only command our Zephyr to render me his usual service, and instead of your own sacred person, which is forbidden to me, grant me at least the sight of my sisters! By these soft, long hairs of yours, scented with cinnamon, by these smooth, velvety cheeks, so like mine, by this chest of yours that burns with I know not what heat, I beg you! Grant that one day I may know your face at least in the face of the child I carry in my womb! I pray to you as a suppliant before a god: grant me the joy of being able to embrace my sisters again, and thus console your devoted Psyche! I no longer wish to see your face, and not even the darkness of the night troubles me: you are my light, and you are mine!"
The husband, overcome and conquered by these words and by Psyche's tender embraces, drying her tears with his hair, promised to grant her everything, then hastened to disappear before daybreak.