profundity with which the former had in those past days expounded the mysteries of the various modes of capital punishment,—quartering, rending by dogs, impalement, decapitation,—and with what nice care he thereupon sought to prove that the robber should not let himself be caught; but if unfortunately caught, how he must seek by all possible means to escape. Ah! of what help had his science been to him? So little may man avoid his fate, which is, as we know, the fruit of his deeds—it may be in this, it may be in some former life!
To me it seemed as though he looked very earnestly from the hollows of his empty eyes, and his half-open mouth called to me: "Kamanita! Kamanita! Look closely upon me, consider well what thou seest. For thou also, my son, wast born under a robber star, thou also shalt tread the nightly paths of Kali, and, just as I have ended here, so wilt thou also one day end."
Yet, strangely enough, this phantasy, which was vivid as any sense perception, filled me neither with fear nor horror. My—according to this supposition—appointed robber career, to which I had up to this time never given an earnest thought, stood suddenly before me, and not merely not in sober, but even in seductive colours.
Robber chief!—what could be more alluring to me in my misery? For I did not doubt for a moment but that, with my many talents and accomplishments, and particularly with those that I owed to the teaching of Vajaçravas, I should at once take the position of leader. And what position could mean as much to me as that of robber chief? Why, even that of a king would be of little count beside it. For could it give me vengeance on
