s to ask him who he was. So the servant
said to the Indrasan Raja, "Who are you? why are you here? what do you
want?" "Oh, it's only a poor Fakir, and I am his son. We have just
come here for a little while to see the country. We will go away very
soon." So the servants returned to the Phulmati Rani and told her what
the Indrasan Raja had said. The Phulmati Rani told her father about
this. The next day, when the Phulmati Rani and her father were
standing in the verandah, God took a pair of scales and weighed the
Indrasan Raja in them. His weight was only that of one flower! "Oh,"
said the Raja, when he saw that, "here is the husband for the Phulmati
Rani!" The next day, after the Phulmati Rani had had her bath, her
father took her and weighed her, and he also weighed the Indrasan
Raja. And they were each the same weight. Each weighed one flower,
although the Indrasan Raja was fat and the Phulmati Rani thin. The
next day they were married, and there was a grand wedding. God said he
was too poor-looking to appear, so he bought a quantity of elephants,
and camels, and horses, and cows, and sheep, and goats, and made a
procession, and came to the wedding. Then he went back to heaven, but
before he went he said to the Indrasan Raja "You must stay here one
whole year; then go back to your father and to your kingdom. As long
as you put flowers on your ears no danger will come near you." (This
was in order that the fairies might know that he was a very great Raja
and not hurt him.) "All right," said the Indrasan Raja. And God went
back to heaven.

So the Indrasan Raja stayed for a whole year. Then he told the Raja,
the Phulmati Rani's father, that he wished to go back to his own
kingdom. "All right," said the Raja, and he wanted to give him horses,
and camels, and elephants. But the Indrasan Raja and the Phulmati Rani
said they wanted nothing but a tent and a cooly. Well, they set out;
but the Indrasan Raja forgot to put flowers on his ears, and after
some days the Indrasan Raja was very, very tired, so he said, "We will
sit down under these big trees and rest awhile. Our baggage will soon
be here; it is only a little way behind." So they sat down, and the
Raja said he felt so tired he must sleep. "Very well," said the Rani;
"lay your head in my lap and sleep." After a while a shoemaker's wife
came by to get some water from a tank which was close to the spot
where the Raja and Rani were resting. Now, the shoemaker's wife was
v