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Ward. What our sovereign imagines, cannot possibly have happened; since the hermitage has been rendered secure from evil by the mere sound of his bowstring. The pious men, whom the king's benevolence has made happy, are come, I presume, to do him homage.

Cham. This way, respectable strangers; come this way.

Sárn. My friend Sáradwata, there sits the king of men, who has felicity at command, yet shows equal respect to all: here no subject, even of the lowest class, is received with contempt. Nevertheless, my soul having ever been free from attachment to worldly things, I consider this hearth, although a crowd now surround it, as the station merely of consecrated fire.

Sárad. I was not less confounded than yourself on entering the populous city; but now I look on it, as a man just bathed in pure water, on a man smeared with oil and dust, as the pure on the impure, as the waking on the sleeping, as the free man on the captive, as the independent on the slave.

Priest. Thence it is, that men, like you two, are so elevated above other mortals.

Sac. [Perceiving a bad omen.] Venerable mother, I feel my right eye throb! What means this involuntary motion?