GRANDFATHER. If my King chose to make himself shown, your eyes would not have noticed him. He would not stand out like that amongst others—he is one of the people, he mingles with the common populace.
KUMBHA. But did I not tell you I saw his banner?
GRANDFATHER. What did you see displayed on his banner?
KUMBHA. It had a red _Kimshuk_ flower painted on it—the bright and glittering scarlet dazzled my eyes.
GRANDFATHER. My King has a thunderbolt within a lotus painted on his flag.
KUMBHA. But every one is saying, the King is out in this festival: every one.
GRANDFATHER. Why, so he is, of course: but he has no heralds, no army, no retinue, no music bands or lights to accompany him.
KUMBHA. So none could recognise him in his incognito, it seems.
GRANDFATHER. Perhaps there are a few that can.
KUMBHA. And those that can recognise him—does the King grant them whatever they ask for?
GRANDFATHER. But they never ask for anything. No beggar will ever know the King. The greater beggar appears like the King to the eyes of the lesser beggar. O fool, the man that has come out to-day attired in crimson and gold to beg from you—it is him whom you are trumpeting as your King! . . . Ah, there comes my mad friend! Oh come, my brothers! we cannot spend the day in idle wrangling and prating—let us now have some mad frolic, some wild enjoyment!
_Do you smile, my friends? Do you laugh, my brothers? I roam in search of the golden stag! Ah yes, the fleet-foot vision that ever eludes me!_
_Oh, he flits and glimpses like a flash and then is gone, the untamed rover of the wilds! Approach him and he is afar in a trice, leaving a cloud of haze and dust before thy eyes! _
_Yet I roam in search of the golden stag, though I may never catch him in these wilds! Oh, I roam and wander through woods and fields and nameless lands like a restless vagabond, never caring to turn my back. _
_You all come and buy in the marketplace and go back to your homes laden with goods and provisions: but me the wild winds of unscalable heights have touched and kissed—Oh, I know not when or where! _
_I have parted with my all to get what never has become mine! And yet think my moanings and my tears are for the things I thus have lost! _