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106 prowess, became the joy of the whole people. Making their pleasure and welfare his sole object, he administered the affairs of the city heedfully. And bending his wise mind to his young wife, Sita, and dedicating to her his whole heart also, Rama passed long hours of delight in her sweet company. She charmed him, say the old records, as much by her loveliness as by her dignity and nobleness, and still more by her goodness than by her loveliness. And she in her turn, by her perfect sympathy and graciousness, was able to enter into every thought and feeling of Rama, so that the bond of her wifehood was one of joy as well as duty. And those who saw Sita and Rama together, felt them to be in truth one soul, and inseparable, even as Vishnu, the Divine Lord, cannot be separated in the thoughts of men from Sree, the divine grace.

Now seeing his son Rama so full of virtues and accomplishments, there arose a desire in the heart of the old King Dasaratha to have him made king before he himself should die. And being much troubled by certain inauspicious omens observed by the royal astrologers—omens which were apt to portend trouble, and even to bring about the deaths of kings—he felt that the coronation would be well made without delay. Therefore he called to his presence a royal council, and when the nobles and ministers were all assembled, he told them