“No; I would, under no consideration, evade the performance of an obligation as sacred as it is awful, and obligatory in proportion as it is sacred.”
“Nay, these are not your real sentiments; you need use no disguise with me. I can save you from the necessity of dying upon the pile, if you’ll make it worth a priest’s while to risk the peace of his own soul in that strange land of darkness or of light—who shall say which?—whither thy husband is rapidly hastening!”
“Save me! Why would you save me from a sacrifice which I deem an immunity from mortal cares? In this life, a woman’s condition is one of endurance, of slavery, of pain; I would be glad to enter upon an existence where each and all are unknown.”
“You speak indeed like a feeble woman. Do you not know that, if your body is consumed with your husband’s on the funeral pile, your soul will follow his to whatever destiny it may be appointed? This is a sad hazard, for he dies in the prime of manhood, when the blood is warm and the senses are all full of the glowing warmth of young and vigorous life. He has had no time to expiate, by penance the miscarriages of youthful years. The mellowing hand of age has not yet taught him experience, nor the penalties of indulgence wisdom. Thou art too lovely to follow him to a future doom that befits thee not.”
By this time the opium was beginning to act upon the aged debauchee, and his eyes emitted the fire, and his limbs the elasticity of youth—so potential is that debasing drug. The lovely Hindoo was shocked; but it was dangerous to offend a Brahmin. Advancing, he laid his shrivelled hand upon her shoulder, and said—“Daughter, come to the temple this night, and bring thy offerings to the idol; be assured thou shalt not want an intercessor. Think no more of burning. When thy husband dies, thou mayst yet be happy. The multitude must think that the sacrifice is performed, but trust to me, and feeble as this arm may seem, it will prove an arm of might in thy protection—it shall snatch thee from the flames.”
“Leave me,” said the unhappy wife; “one who knows her duty, and how to perform it, needs no adviser but her conscience. I shall endeavour to propitiate the divinity, by presenting my oblations before the presiding deity of our holy temple, and there lay my hopes.”
“This evening we shall meet,” said the Brahmin, as he retired with an alacrity peculiar alike to robust youth and opium.
The faithful, though unhappy wife, crept softly to her husband’s side, and gazed upon him with a glance of anxious inquiry, but spoke not, fearing to disturb him. Overcome by his exertion of talking with the Brahmin, he had fallen into a deep but disturbed sleep.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The belief of the Hindoos generally is that, after a course of progressive changes, through each of which the soul advances to a higher state of purification, it is finally absorbed into the Deity, which is, as they conceive, the perfect consummation of bliss.