“Trembling, she tries to restrain my hand, which is busy with her girdle; while I embrace her ardently she puts up her own hands to protect her bosom; her countenance with the beautiful eyelashes she turns aside when I try to raise it for a kiss; by thus struggling she affords me the same delight as if I had attained what I desire.”

Again the second queen and her maid appear unexpectedly and disturb the king’s bliss.  Her object is to go to the king’s picture in the water-house and beg its pardon for having been disrespectful, this being better, in her opinion, than appearing before the king himself, since he has given his heart to another, while in that picture he has eyes for her alone (as Malavika, too, had noticed when she entered the water-house).  The viduschaka has proved an unreliable sentinel; he has fallen asleep at the door of the house.  The queen’s maid perceives this and, to tease him, touches him with a crooked staff.  He awakes crying that a snake has bitten him.  The king runs out and is confronted again by Iravati.  “Well, well!” she exclaims, “this couple meet in broad daylight and without hindrance to gratify their wishes!” “An unheard-of greeting is this, my dear,” said the king.  “You are mistaken; I see no cause for anger.  I merely liberated the two girls because this is a holiday, on which servants must not be confined, and they came here to thank me.”  But he is glad to escape when a messenger arrives opportunely to announce that a yellow ape has frightened the princess.

“My heart trembles when I think of the queen,” says Malavika, left alone with her companion.  “What will become of me now?” But the queen knows her duty, according to Hindoo custom.  She makes her maids array Malavika in marriage dress, and then sends a message to the king saying that she awaits him with Malavika and her attendants.  The girl does not know why she has been so richly attired, and when the king beholds her he says to himself:  “We are so near and yet apart.  I seem to myself like the bird Tschakravaka;[277] and the name of the night which does not allow me to be united with my love is Dharini.”  At that moment two captive girls are brought before the assemblage, and to everyone’s surprise they greet Malavika as “Princess.”  A princess she proves to be, on inquiry, and the queen now carries out the plan she had had in her mind, with the consent also of the second queen, who sends her apologies at the same time.  “Take her,” says Dharini to the king, and at a hint of the viduschaka she takes a veil and by putting it on the new bride makes her a queen and spouse of equal rank with herself.  And the king answers: 

“I am not surprised at your magnanimity.  If women are faithful and kind to their husbands, they even bring, by way of serving him, new wives to him, like unto the rivers which provide that the water of other streams also is carried to the ocean.  I have now but one more wish; be hereafter always, irascible queen, prepared to do me homage.  I wish this for the sake of the other women.”

IV.  THE STORY OF SAVITRI