So then, when her funeral obsequies were over, that widowed King,
strange to say! fell into melancholy, deceiving all his subjects, as if
by express design. For they pitied him exceedingly, each saying to the
other: See, now, how this good Queen's death has robbed this poor
deserted King as it were of his own soul: as well, indeed, it might. For
she was a _patidewata_,[12] and a Sawitri, not only in her name, but in
her nature, and rather than outlive him, preferred to go before.
Whereas, on the contrary, that King's decline arose, not from regret,
but from remorse, mixed with anxiety and the apprehension of his coming
doom. For this is the way of the weak, that they yield to evil impulse,
and yet repent of their own doings, taking fright at the sight of them,
as soon as they are done, and discovering the terrible consequences of
works, too late. For a deed that is done, is divided from what it was,
before it was done, by all eternity, in the fraction of a second: as
this King found to his cost. For even as he gazed at the body of his
queen, lying dead on the floor beside him, remorse rose up as it were
out of her body and took him by the throat. And at that moment, he would
have thrown away his kingdom like a blade of grass, to bring her back to
life. And his longing to get rid of her changed, like a flash of
lightning, into a passionate yearning to repossess her, dead. And he
said to himself, as he looked at her: Where in the world shall I find
another resembling her in the least degree, and what shall I do, to save
myself from the ripening of her curse? For destiny listens in silence to
the prayers of a pure woman, and she, beyond all doubt, was one.
[Footnote 12: i.e. _a wife who makes a god of her husband_: the highest
of all possible praises. Sawitri is the Hindoo Alcestis.]
So then, from that very moment, every thought of replacing her by
another queen abandoned him, as if her life, in leaving her, had drawn
with it his own. And all his taste for life at all, and all desires
whatever, suddenly left him in a body, as if out of disgust at his
behaviour. And he sank into despair, and pined and waned like an old
moon, and grew gradually dimmer, and thinner, and more gloomy, till
there was hardly anything left of him at all, but skin and bone. And
finally, seeing its opportunity, a burning fever arising from a chill
entered in and took possession of all his limbs, as if to give him a
foretaste of the flames of his own pyre.
And then at last, perceiving that Yama had caught him in his noose, and
finding himself in the mouth of death, he summoned his prime minister,
together with his son. And when they came, he said to them: Since I am
on the very point of following my wife, as, had I gone before her, she
would have followed me, _sati_[13] that she was, there is no time to
lose. Do thou, my son, get married, as quickly as thou canst, for the
god of death has clutched us both, as if he was in a hurry, just at the
very moment when we were thinking of procuring thee a wife. And as it
is, I am sore afraid of going to meet my ancestors, who will angrily
reproach me for placing them in jeopardy, by neglecting to provide for
them in time. And when they ask me, saying: Where is thy son's son? what
answer shall I make? And therefore, O my minister, I leave this son of
mine and his marriage as a deposit in thy hands, which I shall require
of thee in the other world. Postpone all other policy to the duty of
finding him a wife: and if thou canst, let her resemble his mother, that
was mine.
[Footnote 13: _Sati_, which means _a good woman_, is always understood
by Europeans to refer to what is only the last manifestation of her
quality, the burning herself on her dead lord's pyre. But the term does
not necessarily contain any reference to that stern climax of her
virtue.]
So having spoken, in a little while he died, leaving everybody in his
kingdom wondering at his affection for his wife. For nobody knew the
truth, which was as it were burned up and utterly annihilated by the
fires that consumed the body of his wife and his own. And he left behind
him a reputation for fidelity that was absolutely false. For none but
the Deity can penetrate the disguise of hypocrisy. And yet, though he
deceived all the subjects in his kingdom, he did not succeed in blinding
the eyes of Dharma,[14] who caught his soul in his noose, and doomed it,
for his treachery, to be born again in the body of a worm.
[Footnote 14: Another name for Yama, the god of death, which we may here
take as equivalent to "Justice."]