And when the Princess had spoken, she rose up and went out, reluctantly, and the King's heart went with her. But the King and Rasakósha returned to their own apartments.
[1] A term, very common in Sanskrit poetry, for _a woman who goes of her own accord to her lover_.
[2] It is not clear how she knew this, unless she heard him tell the judge.
Then the King said to Rasakósha: My friend, though I hear but little of your stories, for the beauty of my beloved holds me spellbound and stops my ears, yet methinks her intelligence must be more than human, for as yet even you have not succeeded in posing it. And now eleven of my days are gone, and only ten remain. Never will I forgive you if I lose her. For day by day her looks grow kinder, and the moment of separation more appalling, and the efficacy of the portrait less potent to soothe me in her absence, so that it is doubtful whether I can live till to-morrow. And the King passed the night in a state of sickness gazing at the portrait. And when the sun rose, he rose also, and passed the day with difficulty, aided by Rasakósha and the garden. Then when the sun set, they went again to the hall of audience. And there they saw the Princess, clad in a robe of rose colour, and a bodice studded with ox-eyes[1], and her crown and other ornaments, sitting on her throne. And she leaned eagerly forward to see the King come in, and he sank upon a couch, speechless and fascinated, under the spell of her beauty. Then Rasakósha came forward and stood before her, and began again:
Lady, there was once a lordly elephant, the leader of a forest herd. And he rushed through the forest, like a thunderbolt of Indra, and the rain of ichor poured down from his mighty temples in streams, as he broke down the bushes and young trees in his charge. And then, having sported to his heart's content, he marched slowly through the glades like a mountain, with his herd behind him. And coming to an ant-hill, he drove his tusks into it, and cast up the earth. And then going onward, he stood at rest in a little pool, and drenched his sides with clear water collected in his trunk: and running his tusks into a bank, he stood leaning against a lord of the forest[2], swaying gently to and fro, with his eyes shut, and his basket-ears cocked, and his trunk hanging down. And the ivory of his tusks showed against his great dark-blue body like a double row of white swans against a thunder-cloud.