THE PRINCE AND THE WIFE OF THE MERCHANT'S SON

"In the country of Kanouj there was a King named Virasena, and he made
his son viceroy of a city called Virapoora. The Prince was rich,
handsome, and in the bloom of youth. Passing through the streets of his
city one day, he observed a very lovely woman, whose name was
Lávanyavati--i.e., the Beautiful--the wife of a merchant's son. On
reaching his palace, full of her charms and of passionate admiration for
them, he despatched a message to her, and a letter, by a female
attendant:--who wonders at it?--

'Ah! the gleaming, glancing arrows of a lovely woman's eye!
Feathered with her jetty lashes, perilous they pass us by:--
Loosed at venture from the black bows of her arching brow they part,
All too penetrant and deadly for an undefended heart.'

Now Lávanyavati, from the moment she saw the Prince, was hit with the
same weapon of love that wounded him; but upon hearing the message of
the attendant, she refused with dignity to receive his letter.

'I am my husband's,' she said, 'and that is my honor; for--

'Beautiful the Koíl[10] seemeth for the sweetness of his song,
Beautiful the world esteemeth pious souls for patience strong;
Homely features lack not favor when true wisdom they reveal,
And a wife is fair and honored while her heart is firm and leal.'

What the lord of my life enjoins, that I do.'