Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/135

 backed, blind, and lame, and were thus implored by them, " Give medicine to us wretched diseased men, in order that we may be delivered from our infirmity; have mercy upon the distressed. For this world is wavering as a wave of the sea, transient as a flash of lightning, and its beauty is short-lived like that of a religious festival. So in this unreal world the only real thing is mercy to the wretched, and charity to the poor; it is only the virtuous person that can be said truly to live. What is the use of giving to the rich or the comfortable?* What does the cold moon profit a shivering man, or what is the use of a cloud when winter has arrived? So rescue us miserable creatures from the affliction of sickness."

When the queen and the other ladies had been thus supplicated by these diseased persons, they said to one another; " These poor afflicted men say what is true, and to the point, so we must endeavour to restore them to health even at the cost of all our substance." Then they worshipped the goddess, and each took one of those sick people to her own house, and, urging on their husbands, they had them treated with the potent drugs of Mahádeví, and they never left off watching them. And from being always with them, they fell in love with them, and became so attached to them that they thought of nothing else in the world. And their minds, bewildered with love, never reflected what a difference there was between these wretched sick men and their own husbands, the king and his chief courtiers.

Then their husbands remarked that they had on them the marks of scratches and bites, due to their surprising intimacy with these invalids. And the king, the commander-in-chief, the minister, the chaplain, and the physician talked of this to one another without reserve, but not without anxiety. Then the king said to the others, " You keep quiet at present; I will question my wife dexterously " So he dismissed them, and went to his private apartments, and assuming an expression of affectionate anxiety, he said to his wife, " Who bit you on the lower lip? Who scratched you on the breast? If you tell me the truth, it will be well with you, but not otherwise." When the queen was thus questioned by the king, she told him a fictitious tale, saying, " Ill-fated that I am, I must tell this wonder, though it ought not to be revealed. Every night a man, with a discus and club, comes out of the painted wall, and does this to me, and disappears into it in the morning. And though you, my husband, are alive, he reduces to this state my body, which not even the sun or moon has ever beheld." When the foolish king heard this story of hers, told with much semblance of grief, he believed it, and thought that it was all a trick played by Vishnu. And he told it to the minister and his other servants, and they, like blockheads,