Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/187

 When the sagaciouu Bhímaparákrama had said this, Mrigánkadatta agreed to his proposal and so escaped from the house with him; and he returned to his lodging where his other two friends were; there he and his friends all spent the night pleasantly in describing to one another all their adventures. And in the morning Máyávațu, the Bhilla king, the head of that town, came to Mrigánkadatta, and after asking him whether he had spent the night pleasantly, he said to amuse him, " Come, let us play dice." Then Mrigánkadatta's friend Śrutadhi, observing that the Bhilla had come with his warder, said to him, " Why should you play dice? Have you forgotten? To-day we are to see the dance of the warder's peacock, which was talked about yesterday." When the Śavara king heard that, he remembered, and out of curiosity sent the warder to fetch the peacock. And the warder remembered the wounds he had inflicted, and thought to himself, " Why did I in my carelessness forget to put to death that thief, who witnessed my secret nightly expedition, though I placed him in the peacock's house? So I will go quickly, and do both the businesses." And thereupon he went quickly home.

But when he reached his own palace and looked into the house where the peacock was, he could not find either the thief or the peacock. Then terrified and despondent he returned and said to his sovereign; " My lord, that peacock has been taken away in the night by a thief." Then Śrutadhi said smiling, " The man who took away your peacock is renowned as a clever thief." And when Máyávațu saw them all smiling, and looking at one another, he asked with the utmost eagerness what it all meant. Then Mrigánkadatta told the Śavara king all his adventures with the warder; how he met him in the night, and how the warder entered the queen's apartment as a paramour, and how he drew his knife in a quarrel; how he himself went to the house of the warder, and how he set Bhímaparákrama free from his peacock transformation, and how he escaped thence.

Then Máyávațu, after hearing that, and seeing that the maid in the harem had a knife- wound in the hand, and that when that thread was replaced for a moment on the neck of Bhímaparákrama, he again became a peacock, put his warder to death at once as a violator of his harem. But he spared the life of that unchaste queen, on the intercession of Mrigánkadatta, and renouncing her society, banished her to a distance from his court. And Mrigánkadatta, though eager to win Śaśánkavatí, remained some more days in the Pulinda's town, treated with great consideration by him, looking for the arrival of the rest of his friends and his re-union with them.