Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/122

90 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?"

"Who are your sons?" asked the Prince.

"Well, that's not so easy to answer when the question is stupidly put," said the woman. "My sons do as they like; they are playing rounders now with the clouds up there in the great hall," and she pointed up into the sky.

"Oh, indeed!" said the Prince. "You seem to speak