The old woman took her staff in her hand and hobbled straight to the palace. Arrived there, she found the Raja’s daughter sitting alone in her apartment. The maiden, seeing her nurse, immediately arose, and making a respectful bow, led her to a seat and began the most affectionate inquiries. After giving her blessing and sitting for some time and chatting about indifferent matters, the nurse said, “O daughter! in infancy I reared and nourished thee, now the Bhagwan (Deity) has rewarded me by giving thee stature, beauty, health, and goodness. My heart only longs to see the happiness of thy womanhood, [58] after which I shall depart in peace. I implore thee read this paper, given to me by the handsomest and the properest young man that my eyes have ever seen.”
The princess, glancing at the lotus on the outside of the note, slowly unfolded it and perused its contents, which were as follows:
1.
She was to me the pearl that clings
To sands all hid from mortal sight
Yet fit for diadems of kings,
The pure and lovely light.
2.
She was to me the gleam of sun
That breaks the gloom of wintry day
One moment shone my soul upon,
Then passed—how soon!—away.
3.
She was to me the dreams of bliss
That float the dying eyes before,
For one short hour shed happiness,
And fly to bless no more.
4.
O light, again upon me shine;
O pearl, again delight my eyes;
O dreams of bliss, again be mine!—
No! earth may not be Paradise.
I must not forget to remark, parenthetically, that the minister’s son, in order to make these lines generally useful, had provided them with a last stanza in triplicate. “For lovers,” he said sagely, “are either in the optative mood, the desperative, or the exultative.” This time he had used the optative. For the desperative he would substitute:
4.
The joys of life lie dead, lie dead,
The light of day is quenched in gloom
The spark of hope my heart hath fled
What now witholds me from the tomb
And this was the termination exultative, as he called it:
4.
O joy I the pearl is mine again,
Once more the day is bright and clear
And now ‘tis real, then ‘twas vain,
My dream of bliss—O heaven is here!
The Princess Padmavati having perused this doggrel with a contemptuous look, tore off the first word of the last line, and said to the nurse, angrily, “Get thee gone, O mother of Yama, [59] O unfortunate creature, and take back this answer”—giving her the scrap of paper—“to the fool who writes such bad verses. I wonder where he studied the humanities. Begone, and never do such an action again!”
The old nurse, distressed at being so treated, rose up and returned home. Vajramukut was too agitated to await her arrival, so he went to meet her on the way. Imagine his disappointment when she gave him the fatal word and repeated to him exactly what happened, not forgetting to describe a single look! He felt tempted to plunge his sword into his bosom; but Fortune interfered, and sent him to consult his confidant.
“Be not so hasty and desperate, my prince,” said the pradhan’s son, seeing his wild grief; “you have not understood her meaning. Later in life you will be aware of the fact that, in nine cases out of ten, a woman’s ‘no’ is a distinct ‘yes.’ This morning’s work has been good; the maiden asked where you learnt the humanities, which being interpreted signifies ‘Who are you?”’