the matter was, she tearfully showed her hands with bruises on them,
like two lilies with black bees clinging to them. So they went and told
the king. And he came in great distress, and asked his dear wife about
it. She showed her hands and spoke, though she suffered: "My dear, when
I heard the sound of the pestles, these bruises came." Then the king
made them give her a cooling plaster of sandal-paste and other things.

And the king thought: "One of them was wounded by a falling
lotus-petal. The second was burned by the moonbeams. The third had her
hands terribly bruised by the sound of pestles. I love them dearly, but
alas! The very delicacy which is so great a virtue, is positively
inconvenient."

And he wandered about in the palace, and it seemed as if the night had
three hundred hours. But in the morning the king and his skilful
physicians took such measures that before long his wives were well and
he was happy.

When he had told this story, the goblin asked: "O King, which of them
was the most delicate?" And the king said: "The one who was bruised by
the mere sound of the pestles, when nothing touched her. The other two
who were wounded or blistered by actual contact with lotus-petals or
moonbeams, are not equal to her."

When the goblin heard this, he went back, and the king resolutely
hastened to catch him again.

ELEVENTH GOBLIN

_The King who won a Fairy as his Wife. Why did his counsellor's heart
break?_

Then the king went as before to the sissoo tree, put the goblin on his
shoulder, and started back. And the goblin said once more: "O King, I
like you wonderfully well because you are not discouraged. So I will
tell you a delightful little story to relieve your weariness. Listen."

In the Anga country was a young king named Glory-banner, so beautiful
that he seemed an incarnation of the god of love. He had conquered all
his enemies by his strength of arm, and he had a counsellor named
Farsight.

At last the king, proud of his youth and beauty, entrusted all the
power in his quiet kingdom to his counsellor, and gradually devoted
himself entirely to pleasure. He spent all his time with the ladies of
the court, and listened more attentively to their love-songs than to
the advice of statesmen. He took greater pleasure in peeping into their
windows than into the holes in his administration. But Farsight bore
the whole burden of public business, and never wearied day or night.

Then the people