the very thing he thought most about. His
grandmother had told him, when he was quite a little fellow and was
about to begin his school life, that every flower in the Garden of
Paradise was a delicious cake, and that the pistils were full of wine.
In one flower history was written, in another geography or tables; you
had only to eat the cake and you knew the lesson. The more you ate, the
more history, geography and tables you knew. All this he believed then;
but as he grew older and wiser and learnt more, he easily perceived that
the delights of the Garden of Paradise must be far beyond all this.

[Illustration: _His grandmother had told him, when he was quite a
little fellow and was about to begin his school life, that every flower
in the Garden of Paradise was a delicious cake, and that the pistils
were full of wine._]

'Oh, why did Eve take of the tree of knowledge? Why did Adam eat the
forbidden fruit? If it had only been I it would not have happened! never
would sin have entered the world!'

This is what he said then, and he still said it when he was seventeen;
his thoughts were full of the Garden of Paradise.

He walked into the wood one day; he was alone, for that was his greatest
pleasure. Evening came on, the clouds drew up and it rained as if the
whole heaven had become a sluice from which the water poured in sheets;
it was as dark as it is otherwise in the deepest well. Now he slipped on
the wet grass, and then he fell on the bare stones which jutted out of
the rocky ground. Everything was dripping, and at last the poor Prince
hadn't got a dry thread on him. He had to climb over huge rocks where
the water oozed out of the thick moss. He was almost fainting; just then
he heard a curious murmuring and saw in front of him a big lighted cave.
A fire was burning in the middle, big enough to roast a stag, which was
in fact being done; a splendid stag with its huge antlers was stuck on a
spit, being slowly turned round between the hewn trunks of two fir
trees. An oldish woman, tall and strong enough to be a man dressed up,
sat by the fire throwing on logs from time to time.

'Come in, by all means!' she said; 'sit down by the fire so that your
clothes may dry!'

'There is a shocking draught here,' said the Prince, as he sat down on
the ground.

'It will be worse than this when my sons come home!' said the woman.
'You are in the cavern of the winds; my sons are the four winds of the
world! Do you understand?