विक्रम चरित (उज्जैन सम्राट् विक्रमादित्य - पराक्रम, न्याय एवं ३२ पुतलियों की कथा सटीक)

19
CHAPTER III.
The same subject continued—Tale of the Alligator and the Traveller
—The chief of the Bahooroopees disposes of the parrot to a wealthy
merchant—A dancing-girl endeavours to extort money from the
merchant by a false accusation, which is frustrated by the ingenuity
of the parrot—The dancing-girl prevails upon the merchant to make
her a present of the parrot—In revenge, she orders her slave to put
him to death; but Veytal, the king of the demons, saves his life, and
enables him to escape—The parrot flies to the temple of the Goddess
Kallika.
THE painful intelligence of the death of Vejydhwaj having
reached his wife, whilst she was engaged in the queen's
apartment, she instantly came to where the mutilated
corpse of her husband was laid, and bewailed her misfor-
tune in no measured terms, in the following frantic excla-
mations:—"Oh! husband of my heart! my best beloved!
—you were ever considered as a brave and unconquer-
able warrior; your equal was not known; you were always
victorious in all your encounters; by your courage and
determination you have on more than forty-two different
occasions ascended to heaven, to take part in the most
dreadful of strifes, and yet were never vanquished. Oh!
my heart's best treasure!—you have been my only support,
and now that you are no more, where can I look for the
means of subsistence? I am swallowed up in an ocean of
grief, which is all the deeper in that I was not with you to
tend you in your last dying moments. It was in vain that you
placed me in charge of a king." The people, greatly
affected by the excessive grief manifested by the warrior's
wife, mingled their tears and sympathies with hers, which
presented a spectacle truly melancholy.
While she was thus lamenting the cruel fate which de-
prived her of her husband, the king approached her, and,
with much tenderness in his manner, said,—"I pray you,