This Prince, they said, lived in the most
delicious region in the world, and the fruit which they imported could
only be procured from his private gardens, where it sprang from one of
the trees that had bloomed in the gardens of the Hesperides. The
Vraibleusians were at first a little surprised at this information, but
the old tradition of the market-gardener was certainly an improbable
one; and the excellence of the fruit and the importance assumed by those
who supplied it were deemed exceedingly good evidence of the truth of
the present story. When the dealers had repeated their new tale for a
certain number of years, there was not an individual in the island who
in the slightest degree suspected its veracity. One more century, and
no person had ever heard that any suspicions had ever existed.
The immediate agents of the Prince of the World could, of course, be no
common personages; and the servants of the gardener, who some centuries
before had meekly disclaimed the proffered reverence of his delighted
customers, now insisted upon constant adoration from every eater of
pine-apples in the island.
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