"Well, are not these astonishing stories? They are; for to see a daughter lie with her father; a young princess satisfy the desires of a bull; a man yearn to enjoy a stone; another marry with himself; to see one celebrate as a girl a marriage she consummates as a boy, cease to be a man without beginning to be a woman, become double outside the mother's womb and twin of a person who is no relative; all these are very distant from the ordinary paths of Nature. And yet what I am about to tell you will surprise you even more.
"Among the sumptuous diversity of all sorts of fruits brought from the most distant climates for the wedding banquet of Cambyses, they presented him with a graft of Orestes, which he inserted in a plane-tree; and among other delicacies, at dessert they put before him apples of the same tree.
"The agreeable taste of the fruit led him to eat a great deal of it; and after the three digestions, which converted the substance of this fruit into a perfect germ, he formed from it in the queen's womb the embryo of his son Artaxerxes; for all the details of his life caused his doctors to conjecture that he must have been produced in this way.
"When this prince's youthful heart was of an age to merit Love's anger it was noticed that he did not sigh for his own kind; he loved only trees, orchards and woods; but above all those to which he appeared tender, the plane-tree on which his father Cambyses had formerly grafted the shoot of Orestes consumed him with love.
"His temperament followed so scrupulously the plane-tree's progress that he seemed to grow with the branches of that tree; every day he went to embrace it; in his sleep he dreamed of nothing else; and he transacted all his business under the curve of its green tapestry. It was perceived that the plane-tree, pierced by a reciprocal ardour, was ravished by his caresses; for suddenly, without any apparent reason, its leaves were seen to stir and as it were to thrill with joy, the branches curved down upon his head as if to make him a crown and descended so near his face that it was easy to perceive this was rather to kiss him than from a natural tendency to grow downwards. It was even noticed that the tree jealously ranged and pressed its leaves together for fear lest the rays of daylight as they glided through should also kiss him. The king for his part placed no limits to his love. He caused his bed to be made at the foot of the plane-tree and the plane-tree, not knowing how to repay such friendship, gave him the most precious thing trees have—honey and dew—which it distilled every morning upon him.
"Their caresses would have lasted longer if death, the enemy of all beautiful things, had not ended them. Artaxerxes expired of love in the embraces of his dear plane-tree; and all the Persians, afflicted at the loss of so good a prince, decreed (in order to give him some satisfaction after death) that his body should be burned with the branches of this tree, without any other wood being used to consume him.
"When the pyre was lighted its flame was seen to knit with that of the body's fat and their burning hair curled together and diminished in pyramid shape until it was out of sight.
"This pure and subtle fire did not divide; but when it reached the Sun, to which as you know all igneous matter tends, it formed the germ of the apple-tree of Orestes, which you see there on your right hand.
"Now the seed of this fruit is lost in your world and this misfortune happened as follows:
"Fathers and mothers, who, as you know, in directing their families, are governed only by interest, were angry that their children as soon as they had tasted these apples bestowed on their friend everything they possessed; and so the parents burned as many of these plants as they could discover. The extinction of the race is the reason why a true friend is no longer found.