towards me from the garden ponds. I had raised my eyes
in order to calculate once more the hour from the stars,
when:— There it was! I beheld, across the deep blue
the
sure on my breast
ere
m.
d it
t
fruit, the kernel had dried up —
the proud
all w
a new light.
expanse of the heavens, between the black tree tops,
softly glowing radiance of the Milky Way.
*
*
*
“The Heavenly Gangā,” I murmured involuntarily,
and in a moment it was as if the pres
w
loosening, were rising in a warm wave within me, to
pour out in a stream of hot tears from my eyes. It is true I
had, a few hours earlier, when my whole life passed in
review before me, thought of Vāsitthī and the brief season
of my love — but then only as of something distant and
strange that seemed to be no more than a foolish drea
Now, however, I no longer thought of it at all — I live
again: I was all at once the self of the past and the self of
the present, and with genuine horror did I become aware
of all the difference. At that time I possessed nothing
except myself and my love; and these — were they no
inseparable? Now — oh what did I not possess now!
Wives and children, elephants, horses, cattle, draught
oxen, servants and slaves, richly filled warehouses, gold
and jewels, a pleasure park and a palace the possession of
which my fellow citizens envied me — but — where was
I? As in some blighted
disappeared — and everything had turned to empty
shell...
Like one awakening, I looked around me.
The extensive and beautifully timbered park lifting
its dark tree‐tops against the night sky, sown with myriads
of stars and threaded by the Milky Way, and
h
here the alabaster lamps glowed between the pillars
— these suddenly appeared to me in quite
137
Hostile and threatening, they surrounded me like magnifi‐
pires which had already drained
re now
, after
and
‐fires of the caravans
ad c
er
deadliest
est possession, this life which you deprive me
f. W
”
ot be long now; midnight was past, and
ith what joy did I look forward to the combat! Anguli‐
māla would seek me; I wished to see whether he would be
able this time also to strike my sword out of my hand. Oh,
how sweet that would be, to die, after I had pierced him
to the heart — him, to whom alone all my misfortune
was due.
“It cannot be long now...” — how often I repeated
that comfort to myself, as hour passed hour, that night!
cently glistening vam
almost the whole of my heart’s blood and we
gaping greedily for the enjoyment of the last drops
which there would remain nothing but the withered
corpse of an abortive human life.
A distant and undefinable noise — murmurs of
footsteps as it seemed to me — caused me to start up.
Unsheathing my sword, I sprang down a couple of steps
and then stood still to listen. The robbers! — but no...
everything was silent, everything remained silent. Far
wide, nothing moved. It was only one of those unfathom‐
able sounds which belong to the stillness of the night, one
of those which so often by the watch
h
aused me to spring to my feet. Outside, there was
nothing. But what was that within me? This was no long
terror which made the blood beat in my temples; nor yet
the courage of despair; no, it was exultant jubilation.
“Welcome, you robbers! Come, Angulimāla! Lay it
all to waste, reduce it to ashes! These are my
enemies whom you destroy — that which would crush
me, you take away. Here, here to me! Immerse your
swords in my blood! It is my bitterest enemy you pierce,
this body devoted to sensuality, given over to gluttony! It
is my sadd
o
elcome robbers! Good friends! Old comrades!
It could n
w
138
Now — at last! No, it was a ustling of the tree‐tops
which died away in the distance, rise again as before —
it sounded as though a great shaggy animal had shaken
itself. Again and again it was repeated, and then there
sounded the shrill cry of some bird.
Were not these signs of approaching day?
*
*
*
Fear made me cold. Was it possible that I was to be
disappointed? Yes, I trembled now at the thought that,
after all, the robbers might not come. How closely within
my reach the end had appeared to be — a short, exciting
fight and then death, scarcely felt. Nothing seemed to me
so hopeless now as the wretched prospect of being found
here in the morning, in the old surroundings, my old self
again, and again bound to the old life. Was that really to
happen? Were they not coming, my deliverers? It must
assuredly be high time — but I didn’t even dare to look.
Yet how was that possible? Was I, after all, the victim of
some illusion when I recognised Angulimāla in that wan‐
derer? Again and again I asked myself the question, but
that I could not believe. And yet if it were he, he would be
sure to come this night — he would certainly not have
appeared at my house in his very clever disguise without a
purpose, only to disappear again as though the earth had
swallowed him; for I had caused inquiries to be made and
I knew that he had begged for alms nowhere else.
The drowsy crowing of a young cock, in the court‐
yard nearby, woke me out of my brooding. The constella‐
tion that I sought, I was now scarcely able to find, several
of its stars having already sunk beneath the tree‐tops. All
the other groups, with the exception of those that stood
highest in the heavens, had lost their clear twinkling.
There was no longer room for doubt; the grey dawn was
r
to
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