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SACONTALA;

damsel; but when she was rejected by me you were not present.—Her name was often repeated by me (how, indeed, should it not?) in our conversation.—What! hast thou forgotten, as I had, the whole of the story.

Misr. [Aside.] The sovereigns of the world must not, I find, be left an instant without the objects of their love.

Mádh. Oh, no: I have not forgotten it; but at the end of our discourse you assured me that your love tale was invented solely for your diversion; and this, in the simplicity of my heart, I believed.—Some great event seems in all this affair to be predestined in heaven.

Misr. [Aside.] Nothing is more true.

Dushm. [Having meditated.] O! my friend suggest some relief for my torment.

Mádh. What new pain torments you? Virtuous men should never be thus afflicted: the most violent wind shakes not mountains.

Dushm. When I reflect on the situation of your friend Sacontalá, who must now be greatly affected by my desertion of her, I am without comfort.—She made an attempt to follow the Bráhmens and the matron: Stay, said the sage's pupil, who was revered as the sage himself: Stay, said he, with a loud voice. Then once more she fixed on me, who had betrayed her, that celestial face, then bedewed with gushing tears; and the bare idea of her pain burns me like an envenomed javelin.