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Rh the tree of knowledge? Why did Adam eat of what was forbidden? I ought to have been there, and then it would not have happened! Never should sin have entered into the world!”

So spoke he then; and so he spoke still, when he was seventeen years old. The Garden of Paradise occupied all his thoughts.

One day he strolled into the forest. He was alone; for to be so was his greatest pleasure.

The evening was closing in, the clouds were gathering, and it began to rain as if the whole heavens were one great floodgate from which the water was bursting. It was, too, as dark as it could be at night in the deepest well. Now he slipped on the wet grass, now he stumbled over bare stones which were scattered over the rocky ground.

He was, besides, dripping wet: the poor Prince had not a dry thread on his body. He was forced to climb over huge blocks of stone, where the water trickled down from