The king, being a man of few words and many ideas, after hearing his commander-in-chief, asked, “O Rajput, what shall I give thee for thy daily expenditure?”
“Give me a thousand ounces of gold daily,” said Birbal, “and then I shall have wherewithal to live on.”
“Hast thou an army with thee?” exclaimed the king in the greatest astonishment.
“I have not,” responded the Rajput somewhat stiffly. “I have first, a wife; second, a son; third, a daughter; fourth, myself; there is no fifth person with me.”
All the people of the court on hearing this turned aside their heads to laugh, and even the women, who were peeping at the scene, covered their mouths with their veils. The Rajput was then dismissed the presence.
It is, however, noticeable amongst you humans, that the world often takes you at your own valuation. Set a high price upon yourselves, and each man shall say to his neighbour, “In this man there must be something.” Tell everyone that you are brave, clever, generous, or even handsome, and after a time they will begin to believe you. And when thus you have attained success, it will be harder to unconvince them than it was to convince them. Thus—-
“Listen not to him, sirrah,” cried Raja Vikram to Dharma Dhwaj, the young prince, who had fallen a little way behind, and was giving ear attentively to the Vampire’s ethics. “Listen to him not. And tell me, villain, with these ignoble principles of thine, what will become of modesty, humility, self-sacrifice, and a host of other Guna or good qualities which—which are good qualities?”
“I know not,” rejoined the Baital, “neither do I care. But my habitually inspiriting a succession of human bodies has taught me one fact. The wise man knows himself, and is, therefore, neither unduly humble nor elated, because he had no more to do with making himself than with the cut of his cloak, or with the fitness of his loin-cloth. But the fool either loses his head by comparing himself with still greater fools, or is prostrated when he finds himself inferior to other and lesser fools. This shyness he calls modesty, humility, and so forth. Now, whenever entering a corpse, whether it be of man, woman, or child, I feel peculiarly modest; I know that my tenement lately belonged to some conceited ass. And—”
“Wouldst thou have me bump thy back against the ground?” asked Raja Vikram angrily.
(The Baital muttered some reply scarcely intelligible about his having this time stumbled upon a metaphysical thread of ideas, and then continued his story.)