Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/374

 When Chandasinha heard this speech of his son's, he approved it, and went on slowly with him, tracking up their footsteps. And he readied that spot near the lake, and saw that dark queen Chandravatí, adorned with many strings of pearls, sitting in the shade of a tree. She looked like the midnight sky in the middle of the day, and her daughter Lávanyavatí, like the pure white moonlight, seemed to illumine her. And he and his son eagerly approached her, and she, when she saw him, rose up terrified, thinking that he was a bandit. But the queen's daughter said to her, " Mother, do not he afraid, these are not bandits, these two gentle-looking well-dressed persons are certainly some nobles come here to hunt." However the queen still continued to hesitate; and then Chandasinha got down from his horse and said to the two ladies, " Do not be alarmed; we have come here to see you out of love; so take confidence* and tell us fearlessly who you are, since you seem like Rati and Príti fled to this wood in sorrow at Cupid's having been consumed by the flames of Śiva's fiery eye. And how did you two come to enter this unpeopled wood? For these forms of yours are fitted to dwell in a gem- adorned palace. And our minds are tortured to think how your feet, that deserve to be supported by the lap of beautiful women, can have traversed this ground full of thorns. And, strange to say, the dust raised by the wind, falling on your faces, makes our faces lose their brightness from despondency. † And the furious heat of the beams of the fierce-rayed sun, as it plays on your flower-soft bodies, burns us. So tell us your story; for our hearts are afflicted; we cannot bear to see you thus abiding in a forest full of wild beasts."

When Chandasinha said this, the queen sighed, and full of shame and grief, slowly told him her story. Then Chandasinha, seeing that she had no protector, comforted her and her daughter, and coaxed them with kind words into becoming members of his family. And he and his son put the queen and her daughter on their horses, and conducted them to their rich palace in Vittapapurí. And the queen, being helpless, submitted to his will, as if she had been born again in a second life. What is an unprotected woman, fallen into calamity in a foreign land, to do? Then Sinhaparákrama, the son of Chandasinha, made Chandravatí his wife, on account of the smallness of her feet. And Chandasinha made her daughter, the princess Lávanyavatí, his wife, on account of the largeness of her feet. For they made this agreement originally, when they saw the two tracks of the small footsteps and the large footsteps: and who ever swerves from his plighted word?