ve of the little
children of the village, to whom he often gave sweetmeats and toys;
and being a very prosperous man, he was not without rivals and
detractors, who liked his prosperity the less the more they marvelled
at it. This was displeasing to Puramitra, though he thought it beneath
him to show it.

"If all were known!" said some people, wagging their heads sagely, as
if they were full of secret and discreditable information.

"If we only had his luck," said others, sighing.

But when Puramitra heard of these things he said, "The fruits of earth
ripen by the will of Heaven and the harvest is on the lap of the
gods."

So saying, he made the sign of reverence, and went his way calmly to a
certain place in his garden, where he was accustomed to practise the
virtue of meditation and to review his inmost thoughts.

Now the inmost thoughts of Puramitra were in the shape of wishes and
strong desires; for which reason, being a religious man, he often
called them prayers. They were concerned chiefly with himself. And
next to that, with two others: Indranu, his friend, and Vishnamorsu,
his enemy.

But the motions of friendship are quiet and slow, and much the same
from day to day; whereas the motions of hatred are quick and stirring,
and changeful as the colors on a serpent. So Puramitra came to think
less and less of his friend, and more and more of his enemy. Every day
he returned at sundown to the retired place in the garden, where an
orange-tree shaded his favourite seat with thick, glossy leaves, and
surrendered himself to those meditations in which his desires were
laid bare to his gods.

At first he gave a thought to Indranu, who had helped him, and served
him, and always spoken well of him; and this thought he called love.
Then he gave many thoughts to Vishnamorsu, who had opposed him, and
thwarted him, and mocked him with bitter words and laughter; and these
thoughts he called just indignation. He reflected upon the many
misdeeds and offences of his enemy with a grave and serious passion.
He considered curiously the various punishments which these
misdemeanours must merit at the hand of Heaven, such as poverty and
pain and disgrace and death, and, after that, all the thirty-nine
degrees of damnation; he turned them over in his mind like a hollow
ball with rings carved within it, and they played one into another
smoothly and intricately, and at the centre of the rings a little
black figure with the face of