30. He fell into a pond again, and then rose and ran with his body wringing with pain; falling again in hidden caves, and then resorting to the cooling shade of forest trees.
31. Now ailing and now regaling, and now torturing himself with his own hands; and in this way I saw him for sometime with horror and surprise in myself.
32. I stopped him in his course, and asked about what he was doing; to which he returned his crying and laughter for his answers by turns.
33. Finding at last his body and limbs decaying in their strength, he thought upon the power of destiny, and the state of human lot, and was prepared to depart.
34. I came again to see another succeeding him in the same desert path, who had been flying and torturing himself in the same way as the others gone before him.
35. He fell in the same dark pit in his flight, where I stood long to witness his sad and fearful plight.
36. Finding this wretched man not rising above the pit for a long time, I advanced to raise him up, when I saw another man following his footsteps.
37. Seeing him of the same form, and hastening to his impending fall in the doleful pit, I ran to stop his fate, by the same query I made to the others before.
38. But O lotus-eyed Ráma! the man paid no heed to my question and only said, you must be a fool to know nothing of me.
39. You wicked Bráhman! he said to me, and went on in his course; while I kept wandering in that dreadful desert in my own way.