Page:Panchatantra.djvu/207

198  away, he saw a hermitage of holy men, and in it a parrot who addressed him from a cage: "Enter O King, and find repose. Taste our cool water and our sweet fruit. Come, hermits! Pay him honor. Give him water to wash his feet in the cool shade of this tree."

When he heard this, the king's eyes blossomed wide, and he wonderingly pondered what it might mean. And he said to the parrot: "In another part of the forest I met another parrot who looked like you, but who had a cruel disposition. 'Bind him, bind him!' he cried; 'kill him, kill him! And the parrot replied to the king by giving a precise relation of the course of his life.

"And that is why I say:

Thus mere association with you is an evil. As the proverb says:

"How was that?" asked Victor. And Cheek told two stories, called

 

There was once a prince who made friends with a merchant's son and the son of a man of learning. 