The poet with a great effort sat up on his bed.

The princess whispered into his car : "The king has not done you
justice. It was you who won at the combat, my poet, and I have come to
crown you with the crown of victory."

She took the garland of flowers from her own neck, and put it on his
hair, and the poet fell down upon his bed stricken by death.



ONCE THERE WAS A KING

"Once upon a time there was a king."

When we were children there was no need to know who the king in the
fairy story was. It didn't matter whether he was called Shiladitya or
Shaliban, whether he lived at Kashi or Kanauj. The thing that made a
seven-year-old boy's heart go thump, thump with delight was this one
sovereign truth; this reality of all realities: "Once there was a
king."

But the readers of this modern age are far more exact and exacting.
When they hear such an opening to a story, they are at once critical and
suspicious. They apply the searchlight of science to its legendary haze
and ask: "Which king? "

The story-tellers have become more precise in their turn. They are no
longer content with the old indefinite, "There was a king," but assume