so be that you would be one. When you wish to win a woman, always
impose upon her. Tell her that you are her master, and she will
forthwith believe herself to be your servant. Inform her that she
loves you, and forthwith she will adore you. Show her that you care
nothing for her, and she will think of nothing but you. Prove to her
by your demeanour that you consider her a slave, and she will become
your pariah. But above all things—excuse me if I repeat myself too
often—beware of the fatal virtue which men call modesty and women
sheepishness. Recollect the trouble it has given us, and the danger
which we have incurred; all this might have been managed at a tank
within fifteen miles of your royal father’s palace. And allow me to
say that you may still thank your stars; in love a lost opportunity
is seldom if ever recovered. The time to woo a woman is the moment
you meet her, before she has had time to think; allow her the use of
reflection and she may escape the net. And after avoiding the rock of
Modesty, fall not, I conjure you, into the gulf of Security. I fear
the lady Padmavati, she is too clever and too prudent. When damsels
of her age draw the sword of Love, they throw away the scabbard of
Precaution. But you yawn—I weary you—it is time for us to move.’
Two watches of the night had passed, and there was profound stillness
on earth. The young men then walked quietly through the shadows,
till they reached the western gate of the palace, and found the
wicket ajar. The minister’s son peeped in and saw the porter dozing,
stately as a Brahman deep in the Vedas, and behind him stood a veiled
woman seemingly waiting for somebody. He then returned on tiptoe to
the place where he had left his master, and with a parting caution
against modesty and security, bade him fearlessly glide through the
wicket. Then having stayed a short time at the gate listening with
anxious ear, he went back to the old woman’s house.
Vajramukut penetrating to the staircase, felt his hand grasped by the
veiled figure, who motioning him to tread lightly, led him quickly
forwards. They passed under several arches, through dim passages and
dark doorways, till at last running up a flight of stone steps they
reached the apartments of the princess.
Vajramukut was nearly fainting as the flood of splendour broke upon
him. Recovering himself he gazed around the rooms, and presently
a tumult of delight invaded his soul, and his body bristled with
joy.[62] The scene was that of fairyland. Golden censers exhaled
the most costly perfumes, and gemmed vases bore the most beautiful
flowers; silver lamps containing fragrant oil illuminated doors whose
panels were wonderfully decorated, and walls adorned with pictures
in which such figures were formed that on seeing them the beholder
was enchanted. On one side of the room stood a bed of flowers and a
couch covered with brocade of gold, and strewed with freshly-culled
jasmine flowers. On the other side, arranged in proper order, were
attar-holders, betel-boxes, rose-water bottles, trays, and silver
cases with four partitions for essences compounded of rose-leaves,
sugar, and spices, prepared sandal wood, saffron, and pods of musk.
Scattered about a stuccoed floor white as crystal, were coloured
caddies of exquisite confections, and in others sweetmeats of various
kinds.[63] Female attendants clothed in dresses of various colours
were standing each according to her rank, with hands respectfully
joined. Some were reading plays and beautiful poems, others danced
and others performed with glittering fingers and flashing arms on
various instruments—the ivory lute, the ebony pipe, and the silver
kettledrum. In short, all the means and appliances of pleasure and
enjoyment were there; and any description of the appearance of the
apartments, which were the wonder of the age, is impossible.
[62] Unexpected pleasure, according to the Hindus, gives a
bristly elevation to the down of the body.
[63] The Hindus banish ‘flasks,’ et hoc genus omne, from these
scenes, and perhaps they are right.
Then another veiled figure, the beautiful Princess Padmavati, came
up and disclosed herself, and dazzled the eyes of her delighted
Vajramukut. She led him into an alcove, made him sit down, rubbed
sandal powder upon his body, hung a garland of jasmine flowers round
his neck, sprinkled rose-water over his dress, and began to wave over
his head a fan of peacock feathers with a golden handle.
Said the prince, who despite all efforts could not entirely shake
off his unhappy habit of being modest, ‘Those very delicate hands
of yours are not fit to ply the pankha.[64] Why do you take so much
trouble? I am cool and refreshed by the sight of you. Do give the fan
to me and sit down.’
[64] The Pankha, or large common fan, is a leaf of the Corypha
umbraculifera, with the petiole cut to the length of about five
feet, pared round the edges and painted to look pretty. It is
waved by the servant standing behind a chair.
‘Nay, great king!’ replied Padmavati, with the most fascinating of
smiles, ‘you have taken so much trouble for my sake in coming here,
it is right that I perform service for you.’
Upon which her favourite slave, taking the pankha from the hand
of the princess, exclaimed, ‘This is my duty. I will perform the
service; do you two enjoy yourselves!’
The lovers then began to chew betel, which, by the bye, they disposed
of in little agate boxes which they drew from their pockets, and they
were soon engaged in the tenderest conversation.
Here the Baital paused for a while, probably to take breath. Then he
resumed his tale as follows:
In the meantime, it became dawn; the princess concealed him; and when
night returned they again engaged in the same innocent pleasures.
Thus day after day sped rapidly by. Imagine, if you can, the youth’s
felicity; he was of an ardent temperament, deeply enamoured, barely
a score of years old, and he had been strictly brought up by serious
parents. He therefore resigned himself entirely to the siren for
whom he willingly forgot the world, and he wondered at his good
fortune, which had thrown in his way a conquest richer than all the
mines of Meru.[65] He could not sufficiently admire his Padmavati’s
grace, beauty, bright wit, and numberless accomplishments. Every
morning, for vanity’s sake, he learned from her a little useless
knowledge in verse as well as prose, for instance, the saying of the
poet—
Enjoy the present hour, ‘tis thine; be this, O man, thy law;
Who e’er resaw the yester? Who the morrow e’er foresaw?
And this highly philosophical axiom—
Eat, drink, and love—the rest’s not worth a fillip.
[65] The fabulous mass of precious stones forming the sacred
mountain of Hindu mythology.
‘By means of which he hoped, Raja Vikram!’ said the demon, not
heeding his royal carrier’s ‘ughs’ and ‘poohs,’ ‘to become in course
of time almost as clever as his mistress.’
Padmavati, being, as you have seen, a maiden of superior mind, was
naturally more smitten by her lover’s dulness than by any other of
his qualities; she adored it, it was such a contrast to herself.[66]
At first she did what many clever women do—she invested him with the
brightness of her own imagination. Still water, she pondered, runs
deep; certainly under this disguise must lurk a brilliant fancy, a
penetrating but a mature and ready judgment—are they not written by
nature’s hand on that broad high brow? With such lovely mustachios
can he be aught but generous, noble-minded, magnanimous? Can such
eyes belong to any but a hero? And she fed the delusion. She would
smile upon him with intense fondness, when, after wasting hours over
a few lines of poetry, he would misplace all the adjectives and
barbarously entreat the metre. She laughed with gratification, when,
excited by the bright sayings that fell from her lips, the youth
put forth some platitude, dim as the lamp in the expiring fire-fly.
When he slipped in grammar she saw malice under it, when he retailed
a borrowed jest she called it a good one, and when he used—as
princes sometimes will—bad language, she discovered in it a charming
simplicity.
[66] ‘I love my love with an “S,” because he is stupid and not
psychological.’
At first she suspected that the stratagems which had won her heart
were the results of a deep-laid plot proceeding from her lover. But
clever women are apt to be rarely sharp-sighted in every matter which
concerns themselves. She frequently determined that a third was in
the secret. She therefore made no allusion to it. Before long the
enamoured Vajramukut had told her everything, beginning with the
diatribe against love pronounced by the minister’s son, and ending
with the solemn warning that she, the pretty princess, would some day
or other play her husband a foul trick.
‘If I do not revenge myself upon _him_,’ thought the beautiful
Padmavati, smiling like an angel as she listened to the youth’s
confidence, ‘may I become a gardener’s ass in the next birth!’
Having thus registered a vow, she broke silence, and praised to the
skies the young pradhan’s wisdom and sagacity; professed herself
ready from gratitude to become his slave, and only hoped that one
day or other she might meet that true friend by whose skill her soul
had been gratified in its dearest desire. ‘Only,’ she concluded, ‘I
am convinced that now my Vajramukut knows every corner of his little
Padmavati’s heart, he will never expect her to do anything but love,
admire, adore and kiss him!’ Then suiting the action to the word, she
convinced him that the young minister had for once been too crabbed
and cynic in his philosophy.
But after the lapse of a month Vajramukut, who had eaten and drunk
and slept a great deal too much, and who had not once hunted, became
bilious in body and in mind melancholic. His face turned yellow, and
so did the whites of his eyes; he yawned, as liver patients generally
do, complained occasionally of sick headaches, and lost his appetite;
he became restless and anxious, and once when alone at night he thus
thought aloud: ‘I have given up country, throne, home, and everything
else, but the friend by means of whom this happiness was obtained I
have not seen for the long length of thirty days. What will he say to
himself, and how can I know what has happened to him?’
In this state of things he was sitting, and in the meantime the
beautiful princess arrived. She saw through the matter, and lost
not a moment in entering upon it. She began by expressing her
astonishment at her lover’s fickleness and fondness for change, and
when he was ready to wax wroth, and quoted the words of the sage,
‘A barren wife may be superseded by another in the eighth year;
she whose children all die, in the tenth; she who brings forth
only daughters, in the eleventh; she who scolds, without delay,’
thinking that she alluded to his love, she smoothed his temper by
explaining that she referred to his forgetting his friend. ‘How is
it possible, O my soul,’ she asked with the softest of voices, ‘that
thou canst enjoy happiness here whilst thy heart is wandering there?
Why didst thou conceal this from me, O astute one? Was it for fear
of distressing me? Think better of thy wife than to suppose that she
would ever separate thee from one to whom we both owe so much!’
After this Padmavati advised, nay ordered, her lover to go forth that
night, and not to return till his mind was quite at ease, and she
begged him to take a few sweetmeats and other trifles as a little
token of her admiration and regard for the clever young man of whom
she had heard so much.
Vajramukut embraced her with a transport of gratitude, which so
inflamed her anger that, fearing lest the cloak of concealment might
fall from her countenance, she went away hurriedly to find the
greatest delicacies which her comfit boxes contained. Presently she
returned, carrying a bag of sweetmeats of every kind for her lover,
and as he rose up to depart, she put into his hand a little parcel
of sugar-plums especially intended for the friend; they were made up
with her own delicate fingers, and they would please, she flattered
herself, even his discriminating palate.
The young prince, after enduring a number of farewell embraces and
hopings for a speedy return, and last words ever beginning again,
passed safely through the palace gate, and with a relieved aspect
walked briskly to the house of the old nurse. Although it was
midnight his friend was still sitting on his mat.
The two young men fell upon one another’s bosoms and embraced
affectionately. Then they began to talk of matters nearest their
hearts. The Raja’s son wondered at seeing the jaded and haggard looks
of his companion, who did not disguise that they were caused by his
anxiety as to what might have happened to his friend at the hand of
so talented and so superior a princess. Upon which Vajramukut, who
now thought Padmavati an angel, and his late abode a heaven, remarked
with formality—and two blunders to one quotation—that abilities
properly directed win for a man the happiness of both worlds.
The pradhan’s son rolled his head.
‘Again on your hobby-horse, nagging at talent whenever you find it
in others!’ cried the young prince with a pun, which would have
delighted Padmavati. ‘Surely you are jealous of her!’ he resumed,
anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his
joke; ‘jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the
very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are,
would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and
the little pleasant surprise she has prepared for you. There! take
and eat; they are made by her own dear hands!’ cried the young Raja,
producing the sweetmeats. ‘As she herself taught me to say—
Thank God I am a man,
Not a philosopher!’
‘The kind messages she sent me! The pleasant surprise she has
prepared for me!’ repeated the minister’s son in a hard, dry tone.
‘My lord will be pleased to tell me how she heard of my name?’
‘I was sitting one night,’ replied the prince, ‘in anxious thought
about you, when at that moment the princess coming in and seeing my
condition, asked, “Why are you thus sad? Explain the cause to me.”
I then gave her an account of your cleverness, and when she had
heard it she gave me permission to go and see you, and sent these
sweetmeats for you: eat them and I shall be pleased.’
‘Great king!’ rejoined the young statesman, ‘one, thing vouchsafe
to hear from me. You have not done well in that you have told my
name. You should never let a woman think that your left hand knows
the secret which she confided to your right, much less that you have
shared it to a third person. Secondly, you did evil in allowing her
to see the affection with which you honour your unworthy servant—a
woman ever hates her lover’s or husband’s friend.’
‘What could I do?’ rejoined the young Raja, in a querulous tone of
voice. ‘When I love a woman I like to tell her everything—to have no
secrets from her—to consider her another self——’
‘Which habit,’ interrupted the pradhan’s son, ‘you will lose when you
are a little older, when you recognise the fact that love is nothing
but a bout, a game of skill between two individuals of opposite
sexes: the one seeking to gain as much, and the other striving to
lose as little, as possible; and that the sharper of the twain thus
met on the chess-board must, in the long run, win. And reticence is
but a habit. Practise it for a year, and you will find it harder
to betray than to conceal your thoughts. It hath its joys also. Is
there no pleasure, think you, when suppressing an outbreak of tender
but fatal confidence, in saying to yourself, “O, if she only knew
this?” “O, if she did but suspect that?” Returning, however, to the
sugar-plums, my life to a pariah’s that they are poisoned!’
[Illustration: Having said this, he threw one of the sweetmeats to
the dog.]
‘Impossible!’ exclaimed the prince, horror-struck at the thought;
‘what you say, surely no one ever could do. If a mortal fears not his
fellow-mortal, at least he dreads the Deity.’
‘I never yet knew,’ rejoined the other, ‘what a woman in love does
fear. However, prince, the trial is easy. Come here, Muti!’ cried
he to the old woman’s dog, ‘and off with thee to that three-headed
kinsman of thine, that attends upon his amiable-looking master.’[67]
[67] Hindu mythology has also its Cerberus, Trisisa, the
‘three-headed’ hound that attends dreadful Yama (Pluto).
Having said this, he threw one of the sweetmeats to the dog; the
animal ate it, and presently writhing and falling down, died.
‘The wretch! O the wretch!’ cried Vajramukut, transported with wonder
and anger. ‘And I loved her! But now it is all over, I dare not
associate with such a calamity!’
‘What has happened, my lord, has happened!’ quoth the minister’s son
calmly. ‘I was prepared for something of this kind from so talented
a princess. None commit such mistakes, such blunders, such follies
as your clever women; they cannot even turn out a crime decently
executed. O give me dulness with one idea, one aim, one desire. O
thrice blest dulness that combines with happiness, power.’
This time Vajramukut did not defend talent.
‘And your slave did his best to warn you against perfidy. But now
my heart is at rest. I have tried her strength. She has attempted
and failed; the defeat will prevent her attempting again—just yet.
But let me ask you to put to yourself one question. Can you be happy
without her?’
‘Brother!’ replied the prince, after a pause, ‘I cannot;’ and he
blushed as he made the avowal.
‘Well,’ replied the other, ‘better confess than conceal that fact;
we must now meet her on the battlefield, and beat her at her own
weapons—cunning. I do not willingly begin treachery with women,
because, in the first place, I don’t like it; and secondly, I know
that they will certainly commence practising it upon me, after which
I hold myself justified in deceiving them. And probably this will be
a good wife; remember that she intended to poison me, not you. During
the last month my fear has been lest my prince had run into the
tiger’s brake. Tell me, my lord, when does the princess expect you to
return to her?’
‘She bade me,’ said the young Raja, ‘not return till my mind was
quite at ease upon the subject of my talented friend.’
‘This means that she expects you back to-morrow night, as you cannot
enter the palace before. And now I will retire to my cot, as it is
there that I am wont to ponder over my plans. Before dawn my thought
shall mature one which must place the beautiful Padmavati in your
power.’
‘A word before parting,’ exclaimed the prince: ‘you know my father
has already chosen a spouse for me; what will he say if I bring home
a second?’
‘In my humble opinion,’ said the minister’s son, rising to retire,
‘woman is a monogamous, man a polygamous creature, a fact scarcely
established in physiological theory, but very observable in everyday
practice. For what said the poet?—
Divorce, friend! Re-wed thee! The spring draweth near,[68]
And a wife’s but an almanac—good for the year.
If your royal father say anything to you, refer him to what he
himself does.’
[68] Parceque c’est la saison des amours.
Reassured by these words, Vajramukut bade his friend a cordial
good-night and sought his cot, where he slept soundly, despite the
emotions of the last few hours. The next day passed somewhat slowly.
In the evening, when accompanying his master to the palace, the
minister’s son gave him the following directions.
‘Our object, dear my lord, is how to obtain possession of the
princess. Take, then, this trident, and hide it carefully, when
you see her show the greatest love and affection. Conceal what has
happened, and when she, wondering at your calmness, asks about me,
tell her that last night I was weary and out of health, that illness
prevented my eating her sweetmeats, but that I shall eat them for
supper to-night. When she goes to sleep, then, taking off her jewels
and striking her left leg with the trident, instantly come away
to me. But should she lie awake, rub upon your thumb a little of
this—do not fear, it is only a powder of grubs fed on verdigris—and
apply it to her nostrils. It would make an elephant senseless, so be
careful how you approach it to your own face.’
Vajramukut embraced his friend, and passed safely through the palace
gate. He found Padmavati awaiting him; she fell upon his bosom and
looked into his eyes, and deceived herself, as clever women will do.
Overpowered by her joy and satisfaction, she now felt certain that
her lover was hers eternally, and that her treachery had not been
discovered; so the beautiful princess fell into a deep sleep.
Then Vajramukut lost no time in doing as the minister’s son had
advised, and slipped out of the room, carrying off Padmavati’s jewels
and ornaments. His counsellor having inspected them, took up a sack
and made signs to his master to follow him. Leaving the horses and
baggage at the nurse’s house, they walked to a burning-place outside
the city. The minister’s son there buried his dress, together with
that of the prince, and drew from the sack the costume of a religious
ascetic: he assumed this himself, and gave to his companion that
of a disciple. Then quoth the guru (spiritual preceptor) to his
chela (pupil), ‘Go, youth, to the bazaar, and sell these jewels,
remembering to let half the jewellers in the place see the things,
and if any one lay hold of thee, bring him to me.’
Upon which, as day had dawned, Vajramukut carried the princess’s
ornaments to the market, and entering the nearest goldsmith’s shop,
offered to sell them, and asked what they were worth. As your majesty
well knows, gardeners, tailors, and goldsmiths are proverbially
dishonest, and this man was no exception to the rule. He looked at
the pupil’s face and wondered, because he had brought articles whose
value he did not appear to know. A thought struck him that he might
make a bargain which would fill his coffers, so he offered about
a thousandth part of the price. This the pupil rejected, because
he wished the affair to go further. Then the goldsmith, seeing him
about to depart, sprang up and stood in the doorway, threatening to
call the officers of justice if the young man refused to give up
the valuables which he said had lately been stolen from his shop.
As the pupil only laughed at this, the goldsmith thought seriously
of executing his threat, hesitating only because he knew that the
officers of justice would gain more than he could by that proceeding.
As he was still in doubt a shadow darkened his shop, and in entered
the chief jeweller of the city. The moment the ornaments were shown
to him he recognised them, and said, ‘These jewels belong to Raja
Dantawat’s daughter; I know them well, as I set them only a few
months ago!’ Then he turned to the disciple, who still held the
valuables in his hand, and cried, ‘Tell me truly whence you received
them.’
While they were thus talking, a crowd of ten or twenty persons had
collected, and at length the report reached the superintendent of
the archers. He sent a soldier to bring before him the pupil, the
goldsmith, and the chief jeweller, together with the ornaments. And
when all were in the hall of justice, he looked at the jewels and
said to the young man, ‘Tell me truly, whence have you obtained
these?’
‘My spiritual preceptor,’ said Vajramukut, pretending great fear,
‘who is now worshipping in the cemetery outside the town, gave me
these white stones, with an order to sell them. How know I whence he
obtained them? Dismiss me, my lord, for I am an innocent man.’
‘Let the ascetic be sent for,’ commanded the kotwal.[69] Then, having
taken both of them, along with the jewels, into the presence of King
Dantawat, he related the whole circumstances.
[69] The police magistrate, the Catual of Camoens.
‘Master!’ said the king on hearing the statement, ‘whence have you
obtained these jewels?’
The spiritual preceptor, before deigning an answer, pulled from
under his arm the hide of a black antelope, which he spread out and
smoothed deliberately before using it as an asan.[70] He then began
to finger a rosary of beads each as large as an egg, and after
spending nearly an hour in mutterings and in rollings of the head, he
looked fixedly at the Raja, and replied:
[70] The seat of a Hindu ascetic.
‘By Shiva! great king, they are mine own! On the fourteenth of
the dark half of the moon at night, I had gone into a place where
dead bodies are burned, for the purpose of accomplishing a witch’s
incantation. After long and toilsome labour she appeared, but her
demeanour was so unruly that I was forced to chastise her. I struck
her with this, my trident, on the left leg, if memory serves me. As
she continued to be refractory, in order to punish her I took off all
her jewels and clothes, and told her to go where she pleased. Even
this had little effect upon her—never have I looked upon so perverse
a witch. In this way the jewels came into my possession.’