he replies: "Oh, no! Joy is
sweeter when it follows distress. He who has been exposed to the sun
is cooled by the tree's shade more than others;" and he ends the same
with the words: "A night seemed to consist of a hundred nights ere my
wish was fulfilled; may it be the same now that I am with you, O
beauty! how glad I should be!"

Absorbed by his happy love, the king hands over the reins of
government to his ministers and retires with Urvasi to a forest. One
day he looks for a moment thoughtfully at another girl, whereat Urvasi
gets so jealous that she refuses to accept his apology, and in her
anger forgets that no woman must walk into the forest of the war-god.
Hardly has she entered when she is changed into a vine. The king goes
out of his mind from grief; he roams all over the forest, alternately
fainting and raving, calling upon peacock and cuckoo, bee, swan, and
elephant, antelope, mountain, and river to give him tidings of his
beloved, her with the antelope eyes and the big breasts, and the hips
so broad that she can only walk slowly. At last he sees in a cleft a
large red jewel and picks it up. It is the stone of union which
enables lovers to find one another. An impulse leads him to embrace
the vine before him and it changes to Urvasi. A son is afterward born
to her, but she sends him away before the king knows about it, and has
him brought up secretly lest she be compelled to return at once to
heaven. But Indra sends a messenger to bring her permission to remain
with the king as long as he lives.

III. MALAVIKA AND AGNIMITRA

Queen Dharini, the head wife of King Agnimitra, has received from her
brother a young girl named Malavika, whom he has rescued from robbers.
The queen is just having a large painting made of herself and her
retinue, and Malavika finds a place on it at her side. The king sees
the picture and eagerly inquires: "Who is that beautiful maiden?" The
suspicious queen does not answer his question, but takes measures to
have the girl carefully concealed from him and kept busy with dancing
lessons. But the king accidentally hears Malavika's name and makes up
his mind that he must have her. "Arrange some stratagem," he says to
his viduschaka, "so I may see her bodily whose picture I beheld
accidentally." The viduschaka promptly stirs up a dispute between the
two dancing-masters, which is to be settled by an exhibition of their
pupils before the king. The queen sees through the trick too late t