Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/92

 love, seductive gestures, and playfully laughing words, everywhere fanning the heated senses of the pleasure-seekers to living flame?

Honoured by the king, worshipped by the people, besung by the poets, they are fitly named "the many-coloured floral crown of the rock-enthroned Ujjeni," and draw down upon us the envy of the less favoured neighbouring towns. Not unfrequently the choicest of our beauties go to these places as guests, and it actually happens that one or another of them has to be recalled by royal decree.

To the lips of one who, like myself, desired to drown the grief that was eating away his life, the golden cup of pleasure, filled to the brim with its intoxicating Lethe draught, was freely—nay, prodigally—held by the fair hands of this joyous sisterhood. Owing to my many talents and wide knowledge of the fine arts, and, not less, of all social games, I became a favoured guest of the great courtesans, of whom one indeed, whose favour could scarcely be measured by gold, fell so passionately in love with me that she quarrelled with a prince on my account. On the other hand, owing to my complete mastery of the robber dialect, I was soon on confidential terms with the wenches of the low streets, whose company, on the path of pleasure of a coarser and more robust type, I by no means despised, and of whom several were heart and soul devoted to me.

Thus madly did I dive deep down into the rushing whirl of the pleasures of my native city, and it became, O stranger, a proverbial saying in Ujjeni: "As fast as young Kamanita."

It was about this time that an event occurred which goes to show that evil habits, and sometimes even vice, may