position of confidential councillor, the ambassador to regulate war
and peace.

Mahi-pala was a person of noble birth, endowed with shining
abilities, popular, dexterous in business, acquainted with foreign
parts, famed for eloquence and intrepidity, and as Menu the
Lawgiver advises, remarkably handsome.

Bhartari Raja, as I have said, became a quietist and a philosopher.
But Kama,[FN#21] the bright god who exerts his sway over the
three worlds, heaven and earth and grewsome Hades,[FN#22] had
marked out the prince once more as the victim of his blossom-
tipped shafts and his flowery bow. How, indeed, could he hope to
escape the doom which has fallen equally upon Brahma the
Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and dreadful Shiva the Three-eyed
Destroyer[FN#23]?

By reason of her exceeding beauty, her face was a full moon
shining in the clearest sky; her hair was the purple cloud of autumn
when, gravid with rain, it hangs low over earth; and her
complexion mocked the pale waxen hue of the large-flowered
jasmine. Her eyes were those of the timid antelope; her lips were
as red as those of the pomegranate's bud, and when they opened,
from them distilled a fountain of ambrosia. Her neck was like a
pigeon's; her hand the pink lining of the conch-shell; her waist a
leopard's; her feet the softest lotuses. In a word, a model of grace
and loveliness was Dangalah Rani, Raja Bhartari's last and
youngest wife.

The warrior laid down his arms before her; the politician spoke out