"Am I not alive?" asked her tempter, "and have I not eaten of
it? Is it not a rank injustice that you should be forbidden to taste it
and to lack the Knowledge of Good and Evil which it would give you? Where
can the offence lie? It must be envy that causes such a prohibition."
His words, the sight of the fruit, and natural hunger all prevailed on
Eve, and she plucked a branch from the tree and tasted the fruit. As she
ate she saw Adam coming in search of her, holding a garland which he had
been binding to crown her. To his reproaches, she replied with the
arguments of her tempter, until Adam, in despair, determined to taste the
apple that he might not lose Eve. Paradise without her would not be
Paradise, and no new wife could make him forget her.
After the first exhilaration of the food was past they began to reproach
each other, mindful of their destiny, of which they had been warned by
Raphael, and, engaged in this fruitless chiding, they were found by the
Son, who, informed of their transgression by the angels, sought them out
in their place of concealment. Adam and Eve he sentenced to a life of
sorrow and labor, the serpent to go despised and ever at enmity with man.
Then, pitying the unhappy pair, he clad them in skins and re-ascended to
Heaven.
While this was occurring in Eden, Sin and Death, feeling in some
mysterious way the success of their parent, determined to leave Hell and
seek their new home.
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