your sons: but if you intend still to allow those pious friends of yours to
revel in shrill denunciation at the expense of your children, let us
exchange our kingdom for the exile of our cousins, and go to the
wilderness, where happily friends are never cheap!


DHRITARASHTRA

Could the pious warnings of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we
might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and
lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the
ancient forest of our royal lineage--so dire is my love. Clasped breast to
breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ruin. Therefore
doubt not my love; relax not your embrace till the brink of annihilation be
reached. Beat your drums of victory, lift your banner of triumph. In this
mad riot of exultant evil, brothers and friends will disperse till nothing
remain save the doomed father, the doomed son and God's curse.


_Enter an Attendant_

Sire, Queen Gandhari asks for audience.


DHRITARASHTRA

I await her.


DURYODHANA