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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1891.
human being have dared to offend us? Who has done you harm? What is the reason of your downcast-looks P Speak out, my love, and the offender, whoever he may be, shall cease to live! For, however poor we may be, our influence is so great, that we can soon bring the culprit to justice."
Thus spoke her husband, and ashamed of the weakness which had displeased her lord, who spoke so nobly, notwithstanding their poverty, and who, as she knew, valued wealth as nothing, she thus answered: -
"Most mighty husband, I know very well that, as long as I have the honour of being your wife, no being either on earth or heaven would dare to offend me. Your virtue ever stands by me as my guardian spirit. Your very name enables me to roam over the whole world chaste and pure. Even fire would fear to touch me! Such are the powers conferred on you by your virtue and good conduct; but, for all my happiness in this world in having you for my lord, I was made a little sad to-day from pondering over in my mind as to why my lord should choose to be so very poor, when there is ample opportunity to make himself rich. I could not understand why my husband, while he could afford to live like a king, should go begging every day. It was only this that made me sad and nothing else, and I respectfully request you now to dispel this confusion from my mind."
Thus ended the wife, and Satyavák, smiling at her womanish simplicity, thus began :
"My dearest wife! After all, you have shewn yourself to be a very woman! I took you to be much above that kind of thing. Having spent the whole of my life in astrology, do you think that I have been so careless as not to cast our own horoscopes and to foresee our future ? If I had known that the acquisition of wealth would have made us happy, and would put us in a better condition hereafter, I should have been the greatest of fools to have disregarded it. What is wealth after all? It is an empty bauble, never steady for even a single moment. The acquisition of a small quantity of it fires the soul with the ambition to acquire more, till life is lost in the pursuit and all other duties forgotten. The last rung of that ladder has never been reached yet by any one. All who have been thus engaged, have given up their lives without ever having attained the full height of their ambition. People amass wealth, - hoard after hoard, and still they sigh because farther hoards are wanting. Wealth is the worst demon that ever lived in this world. In his porsuit sins are committed, to wash away which even the holy waters of the Ganges or of the sacred Samudra Raja, (ocean) have no power. Even wealth honestly got, if minutely examined, would be found to have, here and there, some Haws in it. It is to save ourselves from sins incident to the acquisition of wealth that I have been leading this simple and innocent life. As I have already told you, you are only a woman after all, and have fallen into the weakness of your sex in imagining that it is money that makes one happy, and not other and better things. I have to tell you now that we are to have no children in this world to be of service to us in our old age. Our horoscopes say that. How then would any amount of wealth make you happy? Foreseeing all this, and, not wishing to make our already unfortunate life in this birth (janma) still more unfortunate at our next birth, I have chosen my present mode of life. These are my reasons. As a sensible woman you must agree with me. What have we to care for in this world ? Our own name and fame! I see that my remark, that we are to have no children, has already changed the colour of your face. You need not be so very sorry. I qualified that statement with the remark 'to be of service to us in our old age.' We shall have a boy in our sixtieth year, but he will not be of much use to us! And you must not ask me any more questions !”
Thus said Satyavâk, and his wife, who was all the while listening most eagerly to him, blamed herself for her imprudence in having shewn her weakness to her husband, and, being a good and educated lady, she readily perceived all the varions points and arguments which made her lord adhere to the life he was then leading. Notwithstanding her extreme anxiety to know something more about her future son, she did not like to speak a word on that subject to Satyavák,
