Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/25

 house of Sundarí, after the kuțținí had offered a prayer for his success. And Sundarí followed him weeping, with her mother, outside the city, as far as the well in which the net had been stretched. There he made Sundarí turn back, and he was proceeding on his journey, when she flung herself into the well on the top of the net. Thén a loud cry was heard from her mother, from the female slaves, and all the attendants, " Ah ! my daughter ! Ah ! mistress !" That made the merchant's son and his friend turn round, and when he heard that his beloved had thrown herself into a well, he was for a moment stupefied with grief. And Makarakatí, lamenting with loud cries, made her servants, who were attached to her, and in the secret, go down into the well. They let themselves down by means of ropes, and exclaiming, " Thank heaven, she is alive, she is alive," they brought up Sundarí from the well. When she was brought up, she assumed the appearance of one nearly dead, and after she had mentioned the name of the merchant's son, who had returned, she slowly began to cry. But he, being comforted, took her to her house in great delight, accompanied by his attendants, returning there himself. And having made up his mind that the love of Sundarí was to be relied on, and considering that, by obtaining her, he had obtained the real end of his birth, he once more gave up the idea of continuing his journey. And when he had taken up his abode there, determined to remain, his friend said to him once more, " My friend, why have you ruined yourself by infatuation? Do not rely on the love of Sundarí simply because she flung herself into a well, for the treacherous schemes of a kuțținí are not to be fathomed even by Providence. And what will you say to your father, when you have spent all your property, or where will you go? So leave this place even at this eleventh hour, if your mind is sound." When the merchant's son heard this speech of his friend's, he paid no attention to it, and in another month he spent those other three crores. Then he was stripped of his all; and the kuțținí Makarakatí had him seized by the back of the neck and turned out of Sundarí's house.

But Arthadatta and the others quickly returned to their own city, and told the whole story, as it happened, to his father. His father Ratnavarman, that prince of merchants, was much grieved when he heard it, and in great distress went to the kuțținí Yamajihvá, and said to her, " Though you received a large salary, you taught my son so badly, that Makarakati has with ease stripped him of all his wealth." When he had said this, he told her all the story of his son. Then the old kuțținí Yamajihvá said: " Have your son brought back here; I will enable him to strip Makarakatí of all her wealth.'^ When the kuțținí Yamajihvá made this promise, Ratnavarman quickly sent off that moment his son's well-meaning friend Arthadatta with a message, to bring him, and to take at the same time means for his subsistence.