The cold rain fell upon his face; the keen wind blew around his head; his thoughts turned to the past.
"What have I done!" sighed he; "I have sinned like Adam! Sinned, and I have forfeited Paradise!"
He opened his eyes; the star so far off, which had shone to him like the sunken Paradise, he now saw was the morning star in heaven.
He raised himself up, and was in the great wood near to the cave of the winds; the old woman sat by his side, she looked angrily at him, and lifted up her arm.
"Already! the first time of trial!" said she: "I expected as much! Yes, if thou wast a lad of mine, I would punish thee!"
"Punishment will come!" said a strong old man, with a scythe in his hand, and with large, black wings!—"I shall lay him in his coffin, but not now. Let him return to the world, atone for his sin, and become good in deed, and not alone in word. I shall come again; if he be then good and pious, I will take him above the stars, where blooms the Garden of Paradise; and he shall enter in at its beautiful pearl gates, and be a dweller in it forever and ever; but if then his thoughts are evil, and his heart full of sin, he will sink deeper than Paradise seemed to sink—sink deeper, and that forever!—Farewell!"
The prince arose—the old woman was gone—the cave of the winds was nothing now but a hollow in the rock; he wondered how it had seemed so large the night before; the morning star had set, and the sun shone with a clear and cheerful light upon the little flowers and blades of grass, which were heavy with the last night's rain; the birds sang, and the bees hummed in the blossoms of the lime tree. The prince walked home to his castle. He told his grandmother how he had been to the Garden of Paradise, and what had happened to him there, and what the old man with the black wings had said.
"This will do thee more good than many book-lessons," said the old grandmother; "never let it go out of thy memory!"—and the prince never did.