Then he lay down again on the bed, and slept and dreamed again. And again it seemed to him that he planted a seed, and watered it on the bank of that river: and again it became a tree, and put out leaves and blossoms and a fruit, which as before grew green and red, and sank down into his hand. And he plucked and ate it again. And in an instant, a feeling of inexpressible bliss flowed in upon his soul, and he sank into a deep sleep, and lay as if he were dead, till that old hermit roused him in the morning with the sun streaming in through the door of the hut.
Then that king went home and changed his ways.
So now tell me, Princess, why? And Rasakósha ceased. Then the Princess said: He was afraid. For the tree was the tree of his own evil actions, and the eating of its fruit the ripening of their consequences, dooming him to a punishment of which the agony he endured in his dream was but a faint shadow. But had he lived otherwise, and accumulated virtue rather than vice, he would have obtained ultimately the bliss of emancipation, resembling the deep sleep which came upon him and obliterated his individuality, the second time he slept.
And when the Princess had spoken, she turned and looked at the King with tears in her eyes, and rose up and went out, and the King's heart went with her. But the King and Rasakósha returned to their own apartments.
[2] _Trinamani_, a gem that attracts grass.
[3] This story is only the embodiment of an idea familiar to every Hindoo, but in the original it is very pithily told.
Then the King said to Rasakósha: My friend, now in very truth am I eating the fruit of my own crimes in a former birth, since four days only remain; and well did you say that I am suspended by the heels over an unfathomable abyss, with ice at my heart. For only too well do I see that the Princess will stand the test, seeing that the sharp arrows of your cunning questions rebound from her as if, instead of a jewelled bodice, she was clad in a coat of mail. And the nectar of the portrait has become a poison, which will certainly put an end to me before morning. So the King passed the night in a state of despondency, with his back to the portrait. And when the sun rose, he rose also, and hardly contrived to pass the day by the help of 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 Indian red[1], and a bodice studded with sea-gems, and her crown and other ornaments, sitting on her throne. And she looked at the King, and drooped her head like a flower, and the King sank upon a couch, speechless and fascinated, under the spell of her beauty. Then Rasakósha came forward and stood before her, and began again: