“I have not sinned yet,” said the prince, “and I will not;” and then he
pushed aside the boughs to follow the princess. She was lying already
asleep, beautiful as only a fairy in the garden of paradise could be. She
smiled as he bent over her, and he saw tears trembling out of her beautiful
eyelashes. “Do you weep for me?” he whispered. “Oh weep not, thou
loveliest of women. Now do I begin to understand the happiness of
paradise; I feel it to my inmost soul, in every thought. A new life is born
within me. One moment of such happiness is worth an eternity of darkness
and woe.” He stooped and kissed the tears from her eyes, and touched her
lips with his.
A clap of thunder, loud and awful, resounded through the trembling air.
All around him fell into ruin. The lovely fairy, the beautiful garden, sunk
deeper and deeper. The prince saw it sinking down in the dark night till it
shone only like a star in the distance beneath him. Then he felt a coldness,
like death, creeping over him; his eyes closed, and he became insensible.
When he recovered, a chilling rain was beating upon him, and a sharp
wind blew on his head. “Alas! what have I done?” he sighed; “I have sinned
like Adam, and the garden of paradise has sunk into the earth.” He opened
his eyes, and saw the star in the distance, but it was the morning star in
heaven which glittered in the darkness.
Presently he stood up and found himself in the depths of the forest, close
to the cavern of the Winds, and the mother of the Winds sat by his side. She
looked angry, and raised her arm in the air as she spoke. “The very first
evening!” she said. “Well, I expected it! If you were my son, you should go
into the sack.”
“And there he will have to go at last,” said a strong old man, with large
black wings, and a scythe in his hand, whose name was Death. “He shall be
laid in his coffin, but not yet. I will allow him to wander about the world for
a while, to atone for his sin, and to give him time to become better. But I
shall return when he least expects me. I shall lay him in a black coffin,
place it on my head, and fly away with it beyond the stars. There also
blooms a garden of paradise, and if he is good and pious he will be
