HIGH up in the clear, pure air flew an angel, with a flower plucked from the garden of heaven. As he was kissing the flower a very little leaf fell from it and sunk down into the soft earth in the middle of a wood. It immediately took root, sprouted, and sent out shoots among the other plants.
"What a ridiculous little shoot!" said one. "No one will recognize it; not even the thistle nor the stinging-nettle." "It must be a kind of garden plant," said another; and so they sneered and despised the plant as a thing from a garden.
Winter came, and the plant was covered with snow, but the snow glittered over it as if it had sunshine beneath as well as above. When spring came, the plant appeared in full bloom: a more beautiful object than any other plant in the forest.
And now the professor of botany presented himself. He examined and tested the plant, but it did not belong to his system of botany. "It must be some degenerate species," said he; "I do not know it, and it is not mentioned in any system."
There passed through the forest a poor innocent girl; her heart was pure. Her chief inheritance had been an old Bible. The girl stood still before the wonderful plant, for the green leaves exhaled a sweet and refreshing fragrance. With pious gratitude the girl looked upon this glorious work of God. She took only a single green leaf, carried it home, and laid it in her Bible, where it remained ever green, fresh, and unfading.
A few weeks afterwards, that Bible was laid under the young girl's head in her coffin. A holy calm rested on her face.
In the forest the wonderful plant still continued to bloom. Then came the swineherd; he was collecting thistles and shrubs to burn them for the ashes. He pulled up the wonderful plant, roots and all, and placed it in his bundle. "This will be as useful as any," he said; so the plant was carried away.
Not long after, the king of the country suffered from the deepest melancholy. They applied for advice to one of the wise men of the world, and he sent them a message to say that there was one remedy which would relieve and cure him, and that it was a plant of heavenly origin which grew in the forest.
Then said the swineherd, "I am afraid I carried this plant away from the forest in my bundle, and it has been burnt to ashes long ago."
Not even a leaf of the plant could be found. There was one, but it lay in the coffin of the dead; no one knew anything about it.
Then the king, in his melancholy, wandered out to the spot in the wood. "Here is where the plant stood," he said; "it is a sacred place." Then he ordered that the place should be surrounded with a golden railing.
The botanical professor wrote a long treatise about the heavenly plant, and for this he was loaded with gold. And this part is really the most pleasant part of the story. For the plant had disappeared, and the king remained as melancholy and sad as ever.