28. Being addressed by me in this manner, he looked steadfastly upon me, and then remembering his visit at mine, he replied to me in a voice, as sweet as that of the chátaka—swallow to the sonorous clouds.
29. The sagely siddha said:—You sir, shall have to wait awhile until I can recollect myself and my former state; and then I will relate to you the latter incidents of my life.
30. So saying he fell to the recollection of his past incidents, and then having got them in his remembrance, he related the particulars to me without any reserve, and as if they were the occurrence of his present day.
31. He then spoke to me in a voice, as soft and cooling as the sandal paste and moonbeams; and the words were as blameless and well spoken, as they were pleased to my ears and ravishing of my soul.
32. The siddha said:—I now come to know you sir, and greet you with reverence; and beg you to pardon my intrusion upon you, as it is the nature of the good to forgive the faults of others. (Because to err is human, to forgive divine).
33. Know me, O sage, to have long enjoyed (in one of my former births), the sweets of the garden of paradise in the form of butterfly; as a bee sucks the honey of lotus-flowers in the lake.
34. I fluttered over a running stream, and found it swelling with sounding waves at pleasure; and then seeing it whirling with its horrid whirlpools, I began to reflect with sorrow in my mind (in the following manner).
35. Such is the sight of the troubles in this ocean of the world, which overwhelms me quite in sorrow and grief; and I have become like a parching and plaintive swallow, that wails aloud at a draught of rain water.
36. I find my chief delight to consist in intelligence, and perceive no pleasure in worldly enjoyments, therefore I must rely only in my intellectual speculations, and abide without any anxiety, in the unclouded sphere of my spiritual felicity.
37. I see there is no real pleasure here, but what is derived from our sensations of the sensible objects (of figure, sound, taste, touch and smell); I find no lasting delight in these, that I should depend on them.