"Tell me this, my son: why do you seek the shadows,
in shame? You certainly received no disgrace at my875
hands, but on the contrary delight in all things! How
come you to know evil and hide shame and behold sor-
row and cover your body with leaves and, saddened and
crushed by the woes of life, say that you need clothing,
unless you have tasted of an apple from the tree which880
I forbade to you by express command?"
Adam then answered him again:
"The woman, my Lord, the fair woman gave into
my hand this fruit, which I accepted in sin against thee.885
Now I bear this manifest sign in myself: I know so much
the more of sorrow!"
Then Almighty God asked Eve about this:
"Why did you forfeit these plenteous delights, daughter,
the new creations of paradise, abundant blessings, when890
in your cupidity you seized on the trunk and took the
fruit from the branch of the tree and ate the accursed
thing in defiance of me, and gave of the apple to Adam,
when you both by my prohibition were so strictly for-895
bidden to do so?"
Then the fair maiden, the woman overcome by shame,
answered him:
"The serpent tempted me and urgently prompted me
to sin; through fair words the worm goaded me into
accursed frowardness, until I basely performed the900
deadly act, committed the crime, and robbed the tree in
the grove, as it was not lawful to do, and ate the fruit."
Then our Saviour, the Lord Almighty, ordained wide
wanderings for the serpent, the venomous worm, and905
spoke further in these words:
"To far distant times shalt thou, an outcast, crawl
over the broad earth on thy breast, thy belly; without
feet shalt thou move about, so long as life and breath
remain in thee. Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy910
life, since thou hast accomplished so evil a deed here.
Thee the woman shall war against, and hate thee
[worse than anything else] under heaven, and shall tread
upon thine accursed head with her feet; thou shalt lie
in wait at her heels, in ever-new conflict: for there
shall be war between thy offspring and her offspring915
always, as long as the earth exists under the cloudy
skies. Now dost thou understand and know, baleful
destroyer of mankind, how thou shalt live!"