Page:Fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen (Walker).djvu/141

Rh I feel the strength of the angels and of everlasting life in my mortal limbs! If it were to be everlasting night to me a moment like this were worth it!" and he kissed away the tears from her eyes; his mouth touched hers.

Then came a sound like thunder, louder and more awful than any he had ever heard before, and everything around collapsed. The beautiful Fairy, the flowery Paradise, sank deeper and deeper. The Prince saw it sink into the darkness of night; it shone far off like a little, tiny, twinkling star. The chill of death crept over his limbs; he closed his eyes and lay long as if dead.

The cold rain fell on his face, and the sharp wind blew around his head, and at last his memory came back. "What have I done?" he sighed. "I have sinned like Adam, sinned so heavily that Paradise has sunk low beneath the earth!" And he opened his eyes; he could still see the star, the faraway star, which twinkled like Paradise; it was the morning star in the sky. He got up and found himself in the wood near the cave of the winds, and the mother of the winds sat by his side. She looked angry and raised her hand.

"So soon as the first evening!" she said. "I thought as much; if you were my boy, you should go into the bag!"

"Ah, he shall soon go there!" said Death. He was a strong old man, with a scythe in his hand and great black wings. "He shall be laid in a coffin, but not now; I only mark him and then leave him for a time to wander about on the earth to expiate his sin and to grow better. I will come some time. When he leasts expects me I shall come back, lay him in a black coffin, put it on my head, and fly to the skies. The Garden of Paradise blooms there, too, and if he is good and holy he shall enter into it; but if his thoughts are wicked and his heart still full of sin, he will sink deeper in his coffin than Paradise sank, and I shall only go once in every thousand years to see if he is to sink deeper or to rise to the stars, the twinkling stars up there."