Chapter XI

And the elephant said: O pippala, little as she knew it, she was but pleading against herself, and losing her own cause, even in the winning of it, by making herself ever more and more the mistress of my soul. And all the while she was reducing me as it were to ashes, by the fire of her scorn; strange! she was but raising out of those very ashes other and far fiercer fire than hers, so unutterably beautiful was the body and the soul of my despiser. And then all at once, as if driven to despair by the consciousness of her own forlorn position, she burst from laughter into tears. And she wept, rocking herself to and fro before me as she sat, while I watched her with a heart that almost broke, in despair that I should grieve her, yet fiercely determined to win her for my own. Ha! very terrible is the cruelty of love, piercing with marble heart the very thing it loves with swords; and very wonderful the conduct of a lover, treating as if with hatred, and pitilessly torturing, the thing for which he longs to give his life. For I would have given my kingdom, only to take her in my arms and soothe her; and yet my heart was adamant to her reproaches, intent on nothing but breaking her determination, and bending her to my will. And so I stood, waiting till the tempest of her sorrow should abate, and allow her to bring about herself a change in a situation, with which I myself was powerless to deal. And at last she raised her head, and said: O King, thou seest that I am absolutely at thy mercy. And hast thou then no pity or compassion? Is it my love that thou aimest at possessing? Then how will it advantage thee to take by force, what has value only when it is given of its own accord? Or what can be the value of a body, dead and without a soul? Wilt thou love a corpse, or will a corpse relove thee? Callest thou love, such a union with the dead? I tell thee, such love would turn to hatred in a day.

And I exclaimed: Ah! Watsatarí; say not, say not, thou canst not love me; and speak not of thyself as dead, who art my life, and as it were, the very soul and self of me. Nay, rather is it I, who am altogether dead, without thee. Aye! all these years I have been dead, having only now at last begun to live, since first I climbed upon the wall, to see my life at last, in thee below. Alas! Watsatarí, and dost thou talk of pity or compassion, that hast thyself no grain of either in that heart of thine, that, as I think, is harder than a stone? Or being blind thyself, dost thou imagine all others also blind? And O that I myself were blind indeed, and could not see thee, for as it is, the sight of thee is poison more fell than any _kálakuta_,[13] since that at least was drinkable, but thy blue bewildering beauty is fatal even at a distance, showing the traveller a mocking picture in the desert, only to whet his thirst, without allowing him to drink at all. Aye! surely thou art an incarnation of illusion, more bitter even than the ocean with its brine; for thou art salt not only to the taste but to the sight. And why, then, didst thou allure me with the mystery and depth of thy still unfathomable eyes, or lull my senses and dash my reason from its rock by the surge of the wave that throbs in the motion of thy tantalising breast, only to drive me from thee by menaces of death? Did the Creator mould thee to such incomparable form, or bestow on every movement of thy body so delicate and characteristically feminine a grace, only for my destruction? Did he fill me with passionate longing for exactly such a perfect model of the soft and seductive sweetness of a woman as thyself, only to show me the reality in derision, and say to me as soon as I had found it, Forget it, and go away, and leave it to another. Nay, but I will not go away, and I tell thee, that in vain dost thou endeavour to deprive me of thyself. Rather will I bind thee to myself, making thee a part of me, as is Gauri of Maheshwara, and thou shall be the complement and the other half of me, and shrine me in thy heart and thee in mine.

And she said: Nay, but it is impossible, for my husband is between; and it is not thou, but he, who is the idol and the dweller in my shrine.

And Trishodadhi, as he listened, said softly to himself: Out, out upon the husband that could doubt her, even in a dream! And oblivious of his muttering, he listened on, for the remainder of the tale.