artly with
wine and partly with her sweet caresses, I was seized with madness,
and started up, saying: "All the wealth in the city is not too much
for you; I will fill the house with jewels for your sake." Then, like
a furious elephant who has broken his chain, I rushed out, in spite of
her remonstrances, with a drawn sword, and attacked a body of police,
who happened to be passing. Shouting out, "This is the robber!" they
soon overpowered me, and I fell to the ground.

The shock sobered me at once, and all the horror of the situation into
which I had brought myself by my folly came into my mind. I thought to
myself, my intimacy with Dhanamittra is well known; suspicion will
fall on him; and unless I can turn it off, he, as well as my wife,
will be arrested to-morrow; and I quickly formed a plan by which they,
and perhaps I myself, might be saved. But no time was to be lost; and
as they were about to take me away, I called out to my wife's nurse,
Sringalika, who had followed me, "Begone, old wretch! and tell that
vile harlot your mistress, and her paramour, Dhanamittra, that she
will never see her ornaments, nor he his magic purse again. I care not
for life, if I am revenged on those two wretches."

The old woman being remarkably quick-witted, at once understood my
object in speaking thus, and very humbly accosting the police said:
"Worthy sir, I entreat you to wait a moment, while I ask your prisoner
where he has hid the ornaments of my mistress."

To, this they assented, and coming to me, she said: "O, sir, your
jealousy is without cause; whatever attentions that man may have paid
my mistress, she is not to blame. Now that you are taken from her, she
will have no means of support, and must go on the stage again. How
can she do this without her ornaments? Take compassion on her, and say
where you have hid them."

Then, as if my anger were appeased, I answered: "Why should I, who am
about to die, harbour resentment? Come close, and I will whisper where
I have put them." In this manner I managed to give her a few hurried
instructions. She went away, with many blessings on me, and thanks to
the men for their kindness; and I was taken to the king's prison.

At that time the governor of the prison was a very conceited young
man, named Kantaka, who had lately succeeded to the office by the
death of his father. When I was brought in, looking at me in a very
contemptuous manner, he said: "So you are the thief who has comm