watering it with her own imagination, turned it presently
into a new and strange tree, loaded with peculiar flowers and fruits of
its own: so that as she grew gradually up, she resembled a receptacle of
the essence of old lore, mixed with a native and original savour of
herself. Ha! very wonderful indeed are the influences that rise up out
of a former birth, since even in this lower form of a hunter's daughter
the nature of that incomparable goddess overflowed, like a holy sap in
the dark heart of a forest tree, and welled out abundantly, till it
covered the coarse bark with fragrant buds and shoots, and flowers of
immortal scent and hue. For her body kept pace with the progress of her
soul, as if out of rivalry and jealousy unwilling to lag behind it, in
the acquisition of ornaments and graces. And having no other models, it
found itself obliged to imitate the objects that made up the atmosphere
and soil in which it grew: till at last the deer and the blue lotuses
gazed upon her eyes, and the red fruits and _gunja_ berries at her lips,
and the creepers at her arms, with envy and amazement: and the _tamala_
shadows turned pale when they looked at her hair, and the trunks of the
_nyagrodha_ trees despaired, gazing at the curve of her waist as it sank
into the outline of her heavy hips, and the swans and the elephants
blushed with shame to see her walk, and the gourds swelled till they
burst with jealousy, unable to rival the protuberance of those two
disdainful sisters, her inimitable breasts, and the bees grew mad, as if
intoxicated with honey sweeter than their own, at the fragrance that
floated from the flower of her mouth.

[Footnote 26: _Ekashrutadhara._ This word exhibits the opinion
entertained by the Hindoos as to the close connection existing between a
powerful intellect and a retentive memory. Such a quality indicates the
highest kind of pundit: and it should be recollected that Saraswati is
the divinity of wisdom, the pundit _par excellence_.]

And then strange! just at the very moment when she turned from a child
into a woman, there came over her a change, that resembled the presence
of a single overhanging cloud in the ruby crystal of a clear pale dawn.
For though her father told her something of her story and his own, yet
he never told her all, whetting all the more her curiosity by what he
did not tell, which like a hidden secret she strove to discover for
herself by means of the careless hints that fell e