deed
too long, and it seems time no more clings to her than the
morning dew clings to the lion's mane.

We went through Benares in a long, narrow file. The camels went
first, and the monkey, who had jumped off my shoulder, was
leaping from roof to roof following the tide of the caravan.
Sometimes he would run ahead and chatter; and then suddenly
disappear among roofs and walls. Then he would rush back to talk
to me. I fastened two silver bells dangling from silver chains to
the elephant's sides, and the cool sound of the bells sank into
the cooler serenity of the Indian evening. People were walking
about in purple and gold togas; on the house-tops were pigeons
whose throats shone like iridescent beads. Through latticed
balconies you could see the faces of women with eyes warm and
tranquil as the midnight.

We had not gone very far when Kari put out his trunk and took a
peacock fan out of a lady's hand as she leant against the railing
of a balcony. He then proceeded to give it to me. I made him
stop and give it back to its owner. The lady, however, would not
take it. "Oh, little dreamer of the evening," she said, "cool
thyself with my peacock fan. Thy elephant is very wise, but I am
afraid he is no worse a scamp than thou art."

I took the fan, made my bow to the lady and went on. Hardly had
we gone two more blocks when the screaming and jabbering monkey
fell upon us. Behind him on the roof of one of the houses we saw
a man with a long cudgel which he shook at the monkey. I stopped
the elephant again and said to the man, "Why art thou irate when
the evening is so cool, little man of the city?"

"That monkey! Ten thousand curses upon him!" he said. "He has
been teasing my parrot in its cage, and has plucked so many of
its feathers that it now looks like a beaked rat."

"I shall indeed punish this wayward monkey," I answered. "But
thou knowest that monkeys are no less wayward than thou and I."

At this the man on the roof got very angry and began to hurl all
kinds of abuses at me, but I prodded the elephant with my foot
and he walked on, while the swearing and cursing of the little
man of the city resounded in the stillness of the night. Nothing
befell us that night as we took shelter in the open grounds
outside of the city.

The following morning long before day-break, I heard nothing but
the beat, beat, beat of unknown feet on the dusky pavement of
Benares. It seemed as though the stillness of the night were