Page:The Dravidian Nights Entertainments.djvu/66

 verb of the nuptial barriers, several stupid circumstances—sleep, sickness and other such mishaps? This dirty sleep is one of the number and hence I was not my master. Kindly excuse me for what is past. So saying he, with a smiling face, took some of the fruits and sweetmeats that she brought in the platter and asked the princess also to taste what she liked best. They then chewed betel-leaves after which the princess pleased the ears of Buddhichaturya with some love songs. The latter wishing to subside her passions by a fine story thus addressed her: "My dear love! I have a very fine story to relate. You had better listen to it first. Then we shall go to rest. She agreeing to it, he began as follows:—

"Listen, Oh my love! There was during the good old days a famous town Alakapuri, ruled over by a king named Alakesa. He regarded the life of each of his subjects as his own life, and was very popular among one and all of them. He had a very good wife for his partner in the pleasures of the world. They had a son, and most unfortunately when the boy was only three years of age, the king was carried away by an untimely death. He left behind him a younger brother also who, in the name of his brother's son, managed the state and protected the prince and his widowed mother. But this continued only for a time. Before long ambition, to get the