Page:Anandamath, The Abbey of Bliss - Chatterjee.djvu/76



In the meantime there was a feeling of unrest in the streets of the capital. The report had got abroad that the sannyasis had looted the money which was being sent from the royal treasury to Calcutta. A royal mandate was issued and sepoys and footmen were all scouring the country in quest of ascetics. Now, in that famine- stricken land there was scarcely a genuine ascetic at the time. For the ascetics lived on charity and the people were in no hurry to give them alms by starving them- selves. So all true sannyasis had repaired to such Holy Cities as Benares and Allahabad. Only the Children used to don the ascetic's robes when they chose, and put them away when necessary, Seeing trouble ahead, most of them had left their saffron robes, and the famished troops of the king, unable to catch hold of a single sannyasi, broke into private dwelling-houses, scratched a wretched meal out of the empty kitchen-utensils which they smashed to pieces and retired. Satyananda alone never left this saffron robe * Just at the time when Mahendra and Satyananda, A locked in deep embrace, were praying to God with tears in their eyes, on the bank of the dark murmuring stream and beside the highway where Kalyani lay in de- ath, Nazaraddi Jamadar put in his appearance at the first, Satyananda, the reader will see, wore " a milk-white garb.'
 * This is one of the Homeric nods of our author, for when we. meet him