"I will tell you," said the King. "You must know that in the town of Champaka there is a college for the devotees. Unto this resorted daily a beggar-priest, named Chudakarna, whose custom was to place his begging-dish upon the shelf, with such alms in it as he had not eaten, and go to sleep by it; and I, so soon as he slept, used to jump up, and devour the meal. One day a great friend of his, named Vinakarna, also a mendicant, came to visit him; and observed that while conversing, he kept striking the ground with a split cane, to frighten me. 'Why don't you listen?' said Vinakarna. 'I am listening!' replied the other; 'but this plaguy mouse is always eating the meal out of my begging-dish,' Vinakarna looked at the shelf and remarked, 'However can a mouse jump as high as this? There must be a reason, though there seems none. I guess the cause—the fellow is well off and fat,' With these words Vinakarna snatched up a shovel, discovered my retreat, and took away all my hoard of provisions. After that I lost strength daily, had scarcely energy enough to get my dinner, and, in fact, crept about so wretchedly, that when Chudakarna saw me he fell to quoting—

'Very feeble folk are poor folk; money lost takes wit away:—
All their doings fail like runnels, wasting through the summer day.'

"Yes!" I thought, "he is right, and so are the sayings—

'Wealth is friends, home, father, brother—title to respect and fame;
Yea, and wealth is held for wisdom—that it should be so is shame,'
'Home is empty to the childless; hearts to them who friends deplore:—
Earth unto the idle-minded; and the three worlds to the poor.'

'I can stay here no longer; and to tell my distress to another is out of the question—altogether out of the question!—

'Say the sages, nine things name not: Age, domestic joys and woes,
Counsel, sickness, shame, alms, penance; neither Poverty disclose.
Better for the proud of spirit, death, than life with losses told;
Fire consents to be extinguished, but submits not to be cold.'

'Verily he was wise, methought also, who wrote—

'As Age doth banish beauty,
As moonlight dies in gloom,
As Slavery's menial duty
Is Honor's certain tomb;
As Hari's name and Hara's
Spoken, charm sin away,
So Poverty can surely
A hundred virtues slay.'

'And as to sustaining myself on another man's bread, that,' I mused, 'would be but a second door of death. Say not the books the same?—

'Half-known knowledge, present pleasure purchased with a future woe,
And to taste the salt of service—greater griefs no man can know.'