from the net of your secret apartments, to which I am confined, and suffer me to dwell on the wall Méghach' handa which encircles them, I will hide the picture in a place where none shall see it but pigeons.
Misr. [Aside.] How honourably he keeps his former engagements, though his heart be now fixed on another object!
A Warder enters with a leaf.
Ward. May the king prosper!
Dushm. Warder, hast thou lately seen the queen Vasumatì?
Ward. I met her, O king; but when she perceived the leaf in my hand, she retired.
Dushm. The queen distinguishes time: she would not impede my publick bnsiness.
Ward. The chief minister sends this message: "I have carefully stated a case whieh has arisen in the city, and accurately committed it to writing: let the king deign to consider it."
Dushm. Give me the leaf.—[Receiving it, and reading.]—"Be it presented at the foot of the king, that a merchant named Dhanavriddhi, who had extensive commerce at sea, was lost in a late shipwreck: he had no child born; and has left a fortune of many millions, which belong, if the king commands, to the royal treasury."—[With sorrow.]—Oh! how great a misfortune it is to die childless! Yet with his affluence he must have had many wives:—let an inquiry be made whether any one of them is pregnant.
