34. Sarasvatí said:—Go now prince to the former palace of your past life, and there reign without fear, in the enjoyment of true pleasure. Know prince, that our visits never fail to fulfil the best wishes of our supplicants.
CHAPTER XLIII.
Burning of the City.
The goddess added:—Know further, O prince! that you are destined to fall in this great battle, and will have your former realm, presented to you in the same manner as before.
2. Your minister and his maiden daughter will accompany you to your former city, and you shall enter your lifeless corpse, lying in state in the palace.
3. We shall fly there as winds before you, and you will follow us accompanied by the minister and his virgin daughter as one returning to his native country.
4. Your courses thereto will be as slow or swift as those of horses, elephants, asses, or camels, but our course is quite different from any of these.
5. As the prince and the goddess were going on with this sweet conversation, there arrived a man on horse back before them in great hurry and confusion.
6. He said:—Lord! I come to tell that, there are showers of darts and disks, and swords and clubs, falling upon us as rain, from the hostile forces, and they have been forcing upon us as a flood on all sides.
7. They have been raining their heavy weapons upon us at pleasure, like fragments of rocks hurled down from the heads of high hills, by the impetuous gusts of a hurricane.
8. There they have set fire to our rock-like city, which like a wild fire, is raging on all sides. It is burning and ravaging with chat chat sounds, and hurling the houses with a hideous noise.