"My face is slightly pock-marked I know; but when painted and dressed in the court jewels I looked remarkably well as Sita, with my hair floating away over my shoulders and down to my feet, bound only by an exquisite crown of gold, such as Sita is supposed to have worn. On the very first occasion of my performing before the king I had to take part in this drama. As soon as we had got through the first scene, the king inquired my name and age. This set my heart beating in great wild throbs all through the rest of the play. But after this weeks passed by, and I heard nothing more from his Majesty. He had forgotten me.
"I grew tired of reciting, and keeping time, and singing my sweetest songs for no one's amusement but that of the old hag, who made me work like a slave for the benefit of the rest of her pupils.
"I began to wish there would be some great fête outside of the palace, where all the court, nobles and princes, and the king, would assemble, and where I could act Sita and sing like Narawèke,[12] and dance like Thawadee.[13]
"Then father and mother might see me too, and O, how pleased they would be! I thought. You do not know how dull it is to be acting before women, and with women only, dressed in robes of kings and princesses. If it were only a real king, or a prince, or even a noble, it would not be quite so bad; but all that mockery of love, bah! it is too stupid. I was sick of my life. I wished mother had kept me at home, instead of Chand. I could then have done just what I had a mind to, and have been just as gay and idle as she was.
"Well! the day came at last. I was all but sixteen when that great and eventful day arrived. The fête was in honor of the king's grandson's hair-cutting.
"Though I had performed several times at the court, his Majesty had taken no further notice of me, and I was sorely discontented with myself, piqued at the indifference of the king, and enraged against the old ladies, who seized every opportunity to snub me, and take down my pride, declaring that a pock-marked face was not a fit offering for the king.
"The longed-for day arrived at length. How elated I was! I had to represent the character of the wondrously beautiful Queen Thèwâdee in one of those ancient dramas of Maha Nagkhon Watt, whose beauty is said to have entranced even the wild beasts of the forest, so that they forgot to seize upon their prey as her shadow passed near them. My dress was of magnificent silk and gold, covered with precious gems; my crown was an antique and lovely coronet, one that had graced the brows of the queens of Cambodia. It was richly studded with rubies and diamonds. The first day of my rehearsal in this costume, all my companions declared that I looked enchantingly beautiful, that my fortune was made, and that, if I would only look and act thus, I could not fail to captivate the king. The bare idea of being elevated above my hateful old teacher, and above some of the proud women who domineered over me, half intoxicated me. In this mood I began to realize my future as already at hand, and, growing impatient with my doubts and fears, I sought at nightfall a crafty old female astrologer named Khoon Hate Nah. She took me into a dark and dismal cell underground, and, putting her ear to my side, numbered the pulsation of my heart for a whole hour; she then bound my eyes, and bade me select one of the dark books that lay around me. This done, she expounded to me my whole future, out of her mysterious book of fate, in which all my romantic visions of greatness were as clearly predicted as if the old fiend himself had revealed to her my secret and innermost thoughts. I was troubled only at one part of the old woman's revelations, which said, that, though I was destined to rise to the greatest honors in the realm, a certain malignant star which would greatly influence my destiny would be in ascendency during the month of Duenjee,[14], and that if I neglected to pass the whole of that period in deep fasting, prayer, and meditation, I should sink at once from the highest pinnacle of my grandeur into the lowest and most terrible abyss.
"I resolved that I would fast and pray for that entire month every year of my life. How I wish now that I had never consulted the old hag, because my confidence in her predictions made me proud and defiant to the old duennas, who are now my bitterest enemies!
"Alas! dear father and mother. It were better to have cast your daughter Choy into the Mèinam than to have given her to amuse a king.
"On the day of the fête, I awoke at five o'clock in the morning, and began anointing my person with the perfumes and unguents provided for us at the king's expense. I then spent the rest of the forenoon in making my hair glossy and lustrous, which I did by rubbing it with the oil of the doksarathe.[15] How I gloried and exulted to see it floating away in long shining masses, waving over my shoulders and covering my feet! The afternoon came, and with it the old hags bearing my dress and the costly jewels I was to appear in. They opened the box and laid them before me. I had never seen anything so beautiful. The boxes absolutely sparkled like the stars of heaven in one blaze of light and beauty.