hen I have
entered the fire, neglecting all his duties for the sake of a lute's
strings? Come now, throw thy lute away, and leave music to the
professionals who have nothing else to do, and apply thyself to
policy, and the things of a king's trade. And I said: What do I care
for a kingdom in comparison with my lute? I will not throw it away,
no, not for a hundred kingdoms. I am a devotee of Radha's lover,[11]
and I care nothing for any raj. Then my father flew into a rage. And
he said: Thou shalt do, not as thou wilt, but as I will. Choose,
between thy wretched lute, and the raj: and if thou dost not obey, I
will turn thee off, and put thy younger brother in thy place. And I
said: There are kings in abundance everywhere, but those who can
really play on a lute are very few indeed. And I am one. Let who will
be a Yuwaraja: I will choose the lute. And he said, in wrath: Be off!
and play dirges to the memory of thy dead succession, for thou art no
longer heir. And I laughed in his face, and went away, and got on my
horse, and turned my back upon it all, and rode off laughing with my
lute hanging round my neck, counting the kingdom as a straw. And
thereafter, I wandered up and down, from place to place, living as I
pleased, and utterly disregarding the messages that reached me nearly
every day from my mother, who sent me bags of money and entreaties to
return, all in vain. And my story, like my playing, went from mouth
to mouth, and everywhere I went, the people said: Ha! there goes
Shatrunjaya, the mad musician, who cares more for a discord than the
loss of his hereditary raj! Ha! and if his policy were only equal to
his playing, what a king he would have made! And what a fool he must
be, to care for nothing in the three worlds but a lute's strings!

IV

And yet they were all wrong. For there was another thing that nobody
knew anything about, that I cared for even more than for my lute. And
all the while I wandered, I was looking for a thing that flew before
me the more I kept pursuing it, like the setting of the sun. And yet
it hung, so to say, always just before my eyes, like a picture on the
wall, so that often I used to talk to it, as if it were alive, as I
sat. And yet it never answered, looking back at me in silence with
strange kind eyes, and seeming to listen to me gazing at it wistfully,
and playing on my lute. And this was a woman, that had come to me in a
dream. For but a little while before I quarrelled wit