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The Garden of Paradise
THERE was once a young Prince who had so many and such
beautiful books, that he could find in them anything he wanted
to know except one thing, and that was where the Garden of
Paradise was to be found.
When the Prince was a very little boy, just beginning to go
to school, his grandmother told him that every flower in the
Garden of Paradise tasted like the sweetest of cakes, and the
stamina like the choicest of wines; on one plant there grew
history, on another geography, on a third the German language.
Whoever ate the flower, immediately knew his lesson; the more
he ate, the more he learned of history, geography, or German.
At that time the young Prince believed all this; but by and
by, when he had grown bigger and wiser, and had learned more,
he saw plainly that the beauty of the Garden of Paradise must be
something quite different.
One day he went into the wood; he went alone, for to
wander thus was his chief delight.
The evening approached, the clouds gathered, the rain poured
down as if all the sky were nothing but a vast flood-gate ; it was as
dark as we might suppose it to be at night in the deepest of wells.
The Prince now slipped among the wet grass, now stumbled over
bare rocks which projected from the stony ground. Everything
Was dripping with water, the poor Prince had not a dry thread on
his skin. His strength was just failing him, when he heard a strange
ustling, and saw before him a large lighted cavern. A huge fire
Was burning in the centre, and a very fine stag was being roasted
before it. An aged woman, but tall and strong, as if she were a
Man in disguise, sat by the fire, throwing upon it one piece of