a dream, and there would have been no end to all our bliss had not Somadatta and Medini suddenly appeared to tell us that it was high time to think of returning home.
In the courtyard at Somadatta's we found everything ready for my setting out. I called the overseer of the ox-wagons to me, and—bidding him use the utmost dispatch—sent him to the ambassador, with the information that my business was, I was sorry to say, not yet entirely settled and that I must, as a consequence, relinquish the idea of making the journey under the escort of the embassy. My one request was that he would be so good as give my love to my parents, and therewith I commended myself to his favour.
Scarcely had I stretched myself on my bed, in order—if possible—to enjoy a few hours' sleep—when the ambassador himself entered. Thoroughly dismayed, I bowed deeply before him, while he, in a somewhat surly voice, asked what this unheard-of behaviour meant,—I was to come with him at once.
In reply, I was about to speak of my still unfinished business, but he stopped me peremptorily.
"What nonsense! Business! Enough of such lies. Dost thou suppose I should not know what kind of business is on hand when a young puppy suddenly declares himself unable to leave a town, even if I had not seen that thy wagons already stand fully loaded, and with the oxen put to, in the courtyard?"
Of course I now stood scarlet with shame, and trembling, completely taken in my lie. But when he ordered me to come with him, at once, as already too many of the precious, cool, morning hours had been lost, he encountered an opposition for which he was plainly not prepared. From a tone of command he passed to a threatening
