The little Princess Parvati to be mine! Mine this exquisite human flower whom I loved above all else! It was I who was to protect and watch over her, and be always near her! It filled me with enthusiastic delight, and I gave such a formidable blast of the trumpet that all the guests trembled.
I stopped short, ashamed and distressed, lest my beloved little one might have been frightened, and not care to have me for a guardian. But no, quite the reverse; she laughed and clapped her little hands together, crying:
"More—more!"
So to please her I trumpeted again—but this time rather less violently!
[CHAPTER XIV]
ELEPHANT GAMES
What a paradise for me were the years during which I was the Slave of that Child!
She accepted me at once, and a sympathy and understanding that was extraordinary existed between us. She was beginning to talk, and from her, with no trouble at all I learned Hindostani; till then an interpreter had been attached to my service, with no other duty than that of translating into Siamese such words as it was necessary for me to understand. I had, of course, remembered a few—but very few—and rarely an entire sentence; but with Parvati, who was, herself, slowly but surely acquiring a language—I acquired it too.
I was the one to whom she talked most, and whenever I failed to understand her she would go obstinately over and over the same words. Generally it was about some new play that she had in her mind. With a playmate like me you can imagine that the games were far from usual! "Swing me!" she would say.