Andersen's Fairy Tales [antikvár]

XhE (Sarflen of paradise THERE was once a king's son. Nobody had so many or such beautiful books as he had. He could read about everything which had ever happened in the world, and see it all represented in the most beautiful pictures. He could get information about every nation and every country, but as to where the Garden of Paradise was to be found, not a word could he discover; and this was the very thing he thought most about. When he was quite little and was about to start to school, his grandmother had told him 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 learned more, he easily perceived that the delights of the Garden of Paradise must be far beyond all this. "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, and sin would never have entered the world." That is what he said then, and he still said it when he was seventeen. His thoughts were full of the Garden of Paradise.