strange story, he asked the king: "O
King, why did the boy laugh at the moment of death? I have a great
curiosity about this point. If you know and will not tell, then your
head will fly into a hundred pieces."

And the king said: "Listen. I will tell you why the boy laughed. When
danger comes to any weak creature, he cries for life to his mother and
father. If they are not there, he begs protection from the king, whom
heaven made his protector. Failing the king, he cries to a god. Some
one of these should be his protector. But in the case of this boy
everything was contrary. His parents held his hands and feet because
they wanted money. And the king was ready to kill him with his own
hand, to save his own life. And the giant, who is a kind of a god, had
come there especially to eat him. So the boy thought: They are
ridiculously fooled about their bodies, which are fragile, worthless,
the seat of pain and suffering. The bodies of the greatest gods perish.
And such creatures as these imagine that their bodies will endure!' So
when he saw their strange madness, and felt that his own wishes were
fulfilled, the Brahman boy laughed in astonishment and delight."

Then the goblin slipped from the king's shoulder and went back to his
home. And the king followed with determination. The heart of a good man
is like the heart of the ocean. It cannot be shaken.

NINETEENTH GOBLIN

_The Man, his Wife, and her Lover, who all died for Love. Which was the
most foolish?_

Then the king went back under the sissoo tree, took the goblin on his
shoulder, and set out in haste. And as he walked along, the goblin on
his shoulder said: "O King, I will tell you a story about a great love.
Listen."

There is a city called Ujjain, which seems like a divine city made by
the Creator for the pious who have fallen from heaven. In this city
there was a famous king named Lotus-belly. He delighted the good, and
defeated the king of the demons.

While he was king, a merchant named Fortune, richer than the god of
wealth, lived in the city. He had one daughter named Love-cluster, who
seemed the model from whom the Creator had made the nymphs of heaven.
This merchant gave his daughter to a merchant named Jewel-guard from
Copper City.

As he was a tender father and had no other children, the merchant
stayed with his daughter Love-cluster and her husband. Now Love-cluster
came to hate Jewel-guard as a sick man hates a pungent, biting
medicine