Yet, growing weary of life by reason of Natalika's death, he would not reign upon the throne to which he had hoped to lift her in the embrace of love; but, retiring from the world, he became a holy mendicant of the temple of Tirouvicaray....
And at last, feeling his end near, he dug himself a little grave under the walls of the temple; and ordered the most skilful sculptors to make the marble statue of his beloved, and that the statue should be placed upon his grave. Thus they wrought Natalika's statue as the statues of goddesses are wrought, but always according to his command, so that she seemeth to be crushing roses in her fingers. And when Udayah-Rajah passed away, they placed the statue of Natalika above him, so that her feet rest upon his heart.
I have been witness of this marvel, that by crushing the flowers within her hands she made them to exhale a sweeter perfume!
Were not those flowers the blossoming of her beautiful youth, made lovelier by its own sacrifice?
The temple and its ten thousand priests are gone. But even after the lapse of a thousand years a perfume still exhales from those roses of stone!
[THE CORPSE-DEMON]
There is a book written in the ancient tongue of India, and called "Vetálapanchavinsati," signifying "The Twenty-Five Tales of a Demon."... And these tales are marvelous above all stories told by men; for wondrous are the words of Demons, and everlasting.... Now this Demon dwelt within a corpse, and spake with the tongue of the corpse, and gazed with the eyes of the corpse. And the corpse was suspended by its feet from a tree overshadowing tombs....
Now on the fourteenth of the moonless half of the month Bhadon, the Kshatrya king Vikramaditya was commanded by a designing Yogi that he should cut down the corpse and bring the same to him. For the Yogi thus designed to destroy the king in the night....
And when the king cut down the corpse, the Demon which was in the corpse laughed and said: "If thou shouldst speak once upon the way, I go not with thee, but return unto my tree." Then the Demon began to tell to the king stories so strange that he could not but listen. And at the end of each story the Demon would ask hard questions, threatening to devour Vikramaditya should he not answer; and the king, rightly answering, indeed avoided destruction, yet, by speaking, perforce enabled the Demon to return to the tree.... Now listen to one of those tales which the Demon told: