Having obtained her father’s permission, Shridat applied for betrothal to Jayashri, who, with peculiar boldness, had resolved that no suitor should come to her through her parent. And she, after leading him on by all the coquetries of which she was a mistress, refused to marry him, saying that she liked him as a friend, but would hate him as a husband.
You see, my King! there are three several states of feeling with which women regard their masters, and these are love, hate, and indifference. Of all, love is the weakest and the most transient, because the essentially unstable creatures naturally fall out of it as readily as they fall into it. Hate being a sister excitement will easily become, if man has wit enough to effect the change, love; and hate-love may perhaps last a little longer than love-love. Also, man has the occupation, the excitement, and the pleasure of bringing about the change. As regards the neutral state, that poet was not happy in his ideas who sang,
Whene’er indifference appears, or scorn, Then, man, despair! then, hapless lover, mourn!
For a man versed in the Lila Shastra[78] can soon turn a woman’s indifference into hate, which I have shown is as easily permuted to love. In which predicament it is the old thing over again, and it ends in the pure Asat[79] or nonentity.
[79] The old philosophers, believing in a ‘Sat’ (τὸ ὄν), postulated an Asat (τὸ μὴ ὄν) and made the latter the root of the former.
‘Which of these two birds, the jay or the parrot, had dipped deeper into human nature, mighty King Vikram?’ asked the demon in a wheedling tone of voice.
The trap was this time set too openly, even for the royal personage to fall into it. He hurried on, calling to his son, and not answering a word. The Vampire therefore resumed the thread of his story at the place where he had broken it off.
Shridat was in despair when he heard the resolve of his idol. He thought of drowning himself, of throwing himself down from the summit of Mount Girnar,[80] of becoming a religious beggar; in short, of a multitude of follies. But he refrained from all such heroic remedies for despair, having rightly judged, when he became somewhat calmer, that they would not be likely to further his suit. He discovered that patience is a virtue, and he resolved impatiently enough to practise it. And by perseverance he succeeded. The worse for him! How vain are men to wish! How wise is the Deity, who is deaf to their wishes!