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and he found it.
       
    When Atlas pushed open the heavy peeling wooden door, some of his high spirits were checked. What time had failed to ruin, Heracles and Ladon had achieved. The ground was scorched and polluted from the serpent’s fiery venom. The wall was down where Heracles had kicked it scrambling over. The cloches and the frames and the stakes and the wires that had trained the apricots to the wall were all broken. What fruit was left was run wild and eatenup by maggots or birds. The good soil that he had dug and sieved was thick with matted grass. His shed had a hole in the roof.
    The garden seemed to represent the loss of everything that had mattered to Atlas; his daughters, his peace and quiet, his own thoughts, his freedom, his pride. Angrily, he grabbed a rusty billhook and when he had cleaned it on his leather belt and sharpened it against a stone, he began to cut back the wasted garden.
    By evening there was a great stack of dead branches and unwanted growth and Atlas set it alight like a funeral pyre. The flames scorched up high, even Heracles could feel them on his neck and he wondered what Atlas was doing. The dense smoke offended the gods, who knew that this was no sacrifice, and Zeus himself decided to intervene. He crept into the garden disguised as a rough old labourer in a donkey skin.
       
    ‘Is Lord Atlas returned to The Garden of the Hesperides?’
    ‘Who are you?’ said Atlas, piling nettles onto his fire.
    ‘My name is Parsimonius. I have little to spare and little to share but I will help you if I can.’
    ‘How can you help me?’ said Atlas.
    ‘I can warn you that it was Zeus who ordered your punishment and Zeus who will enforce it.’
    ‘You seem to know a lot about Zeus,’ said Atlas.
    ‘I am a religious man.’
    ‘Most mean men call themselves so – it excuses their own behaviour.’
    ‘How will you excuse your own behaviour?’
    ‘You can tell Almighty Zeus that his bastard son Heracles is holding up the world.’
    Zeus knew nothing of this, or of the encounter with Hera in the garden. Like most women, Hera was careful not to tell her husband everything.
    ‘Heracles has his own punishment to bear.’
    ‘He is able enough to bear his own and mine for a while. Besides he wants to think.’
    Now Zeus was anxious. Real heroes don’t think.
    ‘What is Heracles thinking about?’
    ‘You want to know a lot for a donkey skin don’t you?’ said Atlas, who was beginning to suspect his visitor’s true identity. ‘I’ll tell you for what it’s worth – Heracles is thinking about himself. Yes, Heracles, born with rocks for muscles and a rock between his ears, asked me last night why he should do the gods’ bidding. I thought it was a stupid question, hardly a question at all, but it’s the first question that Heracles has ever asked, other than Which way? and Are you married ?’
    ‘What did you answer?’ asked Zeus.
    ‘I made no answer. If there is no question there can be no answer. No one can ask why to the gods.’
    Zeus was relieved by this remark. He did not doubt that even if Heracles was thinking now, he would not be thinking later. What he feared was that Atlas might begin to consider the nature of Heracles’s blind question.
    ‘You answered well, Atlas. I am sure that Zeus will overlook this small excursion.’
    ‘I am sure Zeus knows nothing of it,’ said Atlas.
    ‘Perhaps you are right. Some questions are best not asked at all. If I were asked now, “Where is Atlas?” I should say, “in his usual place”.’
       
    Parsimonius got up from the tuft where he had been sitting, and bowing to Atlas, left the garden. As soon as he had gone out of the door, Atlas used his arms as jack-levers and heaved himself up the wall so that he could watch his visitor’s path. Parsimonius had vanished completely, but for a small trail of golden-ish dust.
    ‘That was Zeus alright,’ thought Atlas to himself, and something troubled the giant, though he did not