121
in private? And as an acknowledgment of that favour I will give your Majesty every day five hundred dinars, and I do not ask for any gift in return." When the king heard that, he thought to himself, " What harm can it do? What does he take away from me? On the contrary he is to give me dínárs every day. What disgrace is there in carrying on a conversation with a great merchant?" So the king consented, and did as he requested, and the rogue gave the king the dínárs as he had promised, and the people thought that he had obtained the position of a Cabinet Minister.
Now one day the rogue, while he was talking with the king, kept looking again and again at the face of one official with a significant expression. And after he came out, that official asked him why he had looked at his face so, and the rogue was ready with this fiction; " The king is angry because he supposes that you have been plundering his realm. This is why I looked at your face, but I will appease his anger." When the sham minister said this, the official went home in a state of anxiety, and sent him a thousand gold pieces. And the next day the rogue talked in the same way with the king, and then he came out and said to the official, who came towards him; " I appeased the king's anger against you with some judicious words. Cheer up; I will now stand by you in all emergencies," Thus he artfully made him his friend, and then dismissed him, and then the official waited upon him with all kinds of presents.
Thus gradually this dexterous rogue, by means of his continual conversations with the king, and by many artifices, extracted from the officials, the subordinate monarchs, the Rajputs, and the servants, so much wealth, that he amassed altogether fifty millions of gold pieces. Then the scoundrelly sham minister said in secret to the king, " Though I have given you every day five hundred dinars, nevertheless, by the favour of your Highness, I have amassed fifty millions of gold pieces. So have the goodness to accept of this gold. What have I to do with it?" Then he told the king his whole stratagem. But it was with difficulty that the king could be induced to take half the money. Then he gave him the post of a Cabinet Minister, and the rogue, having obtained riches and position, kept complimenting the people with entertainments.
" Thus a wise man obtains great wealth without committing a very great crime, and when he has gained the advantage, he atones for his fault in the same way as a man who digs a well." Then Gomukha went on to say to the prince; " Listen now to this one story, though you are excited about your approaching marriage."
Story of Ratnarekhá and Lakshmísena.:— There lived in a city, named Ratnákara, a king, named Buddhiprabha, who was a very lion to the infuriated elephant-herd of his enemies,
