18. He hurled his defiance at these words of the old Chandála, as the lion lying on the ground, shows his teeth at the sneering of a cat on the top of a tree.
19. He fled in haste into the inner apartment, and among its sorrowful inmates, with as much palpitation of his heart, as the reluctant swan enters a lake of withering lotuses, in the dry season.
20. His limbs grew stiff, and his countenance became pale with fear; and his knees tottered with inward rage, as the trunks of trees shake with the burning fire in their hollows. (The sami or sáin tree is an instance of it. Gloss).
21. He beheld all persons there sitting in a melancholy mood, with their downcast looks and drooping heads; like the bending tops of plants, eaten up at the root by mice and rats.
22. The ministers, the ladies of the harem and all people of the city, refrained from touching his person, as they avoid the touch of a dead body lying in the house.
23. The servants ceased to minister unto him, and the ladies with all their love and sorrow for him, loathed his company.
24. They looked upon his cheerless face and dark complexion with its departed lustre, as the funeral ground which every one loathes to look upon.
25. Though the people sorrowed for his darksome body, now smoking with fumes of his grief; yet they durst not approach his person, which appeared to burn as a volcano amidst its smoke.
26. The courtiers left him with the heavings of their hearts, nor were his orders obeyed any more, than those of quenching the cool ashes with water.
27. The people fled from him as from a heinous Rákshasa, who is the cause of evil and danger only.