‘Then they are pestilent fellows!’ cried the warrior king, Vikram, who hated nothing more than clandestine and runaway matches. ‘No one knew that the villain, Manaswi, was the father of her child; whereas, the Pandit Shashi married her lawfully, before witnesses, and with all the ceremonies.[152] She therefore remains his wife, and the child will perform the funeral obsequies for him, and offer water to the manes of his pitris (ancestors). At least, so say law and justice.’
‘Which justice is often unjust enough!’ cried the Vampire; ‘and ply thy legs, mighty Raja; let me see if thou canst reach the siras-tree before I do.’
* * * * *
‘The next story, O Raja Vikram, is remarkably interesting.’
THE VAMPIRE’S NINTH STORY.
SHOWING THAT A MAN’S WIFE BELONGS NOT TO HIS BODY BUT TO HIS HEAD.
Far and wide through the lovely land overrun by the Arya from the Western Highlands spread the fame of Unmadini, the beautiful daughter of Haridas the Brahman. In the numberless odes, sonnets, and acrostics addressed to her by a hundred Pandits and poets her charms were sung with prodigious triteness. Her presence was compared to light shining in a dark house; her face to the full moon; her complexion to the yellow champaka flower; her curls to female snakes; her eyes to those of the deer; her eyebrows to bent bows; her teeth to strings of little opals; her feet to rubies and red gems,[153] and her gait to that of the wild goose. And none forgot to say that her voice affected the author like the song of the kokila bird, sounding from the shadowy brake, when the breeze blows coolly, or that the fairy beings of Indra’s heaven would have shrunk away abashed at her loveliness.
But, Raja Vikram! all the poets failed to win the fair Unmadini’s love. To praise the beauty of a beauty is not to praise her. Extol her wit and talents, which has the zest of novelty, then you may succeed. For the same reason, read inversely, the plainer and cleverer is the bosom you would fire, the more personal you must be upon the subject of its grace and loveliness. Flattery, you know, is ever the match which kindles the flame of love. True it is that some by roughness of demeanour and bluntness in speech, contrasting with those whom they call the ‘herd,’ have the art to succeed in the service of the bodyless god.[154] But even they must——