Servant. What is your pleasure, your Majesty?
SUDARSHANA. Do you see those festive boys singing and moving through the alleys and avenues of the mango trees? Call them hither, bring them to me: I want to hear them sing. [_SERVANT goes out and enters with the boys._] Come, living emblems of youthful spring, begin your festive song! All my mind and body is song and music to-night—but the ineffable melody escapes my tongue: do you then sing for my sake!
_My sorrow is sweet to me in this spring night. My pain smites at the chords of my love and softly sings. Visions take birth from my yearning eyes and flit in the moonlit sky. The smells from the depths of the woodlands have lost their way in my dreams. Words come in whispers to my ears, I know not from where, And bells in my anklets tremble and jingle in time with my heart thrills. _
SUDARSHANA. Enough, enough—I cannot bear it any more! Your song has filled my eyes with tears. . . . A fancy comes to me—that desire can never attain its object—it need never attain it. What sweet hermit of the woods has taught you this song? Oh that my eyes could see him whose song my ears have heard! Oh, how I wish—I wish I could wander rapt and lovely in the thick woodland arbours of the heart! Dear boys of the hermitage! how shall I reward you? This necklace is but made of jewels, hard stones—its hardness will give you pain—I have got nothing like the garlands of flowers you have on. [_The boys bow and go out._]
SUDARSHANA. I have not done well—I have not done well, Rohini. I feel ashamed to ask you what happened. I have just realised that no hand can really give the greatest of gifts. Still, let me hear all.
ROHINI. When I gave the King those flowers, he did not appear to understand anything.
SUDARSHANA. You don’t say so? He did not understand
ROHINI. No; he sat there like a doll, without uttering a single word. I think he did not want to show that he understood nothing, so he just held his tongue.
SUDARSHANA. Fie on me! My shamelessness has been justly punished. Why did you not bring back my flowers?
ROHINI. How could I? The King of Kanchi, a very clever man, who was sitting by him, took in everything at a glance, and he just smiled a bit and said, “Emperor, the Queen Sudarshana sends your Majesty her greetings with these blossoms—the blossoms that belong to the God of Love, the friend of Spring.” The King seemed to awake with a start, and said, “This is the crown of all my regal glory to-night.” I was coming back, all out of countenance, when the King of Kanchi took off this necklace of jewels from the King’s person, and said to me, “Friend, the King’s garland gives itself up to you, in return for the happy fortune you have brought.”