विक्रम चरित (उज्जैन सम्राट् विक्रमादित्य - पराक्रम, न्याय एवं ३२ पुतलियों की कथा सटीक)

211 goods, and was agreeably surprised to find the inhabitants once more in motion and engaged in their respective callings. Some of them, who recognised Charoo as the former offender, seized him, and a few even ill-treated him. At length they took him before their sovereign, who was no other than the beautiful Chitrangee, and addressed her in the following words :—‘ Good sovereign, we have this day seized the mischievous fellow who destroyed and commingled our property on a former occasion, and who is doubtless come again with the same evil intention. We appeal to you for justice, and trust you will punish him as he deserves.’ Chitrangee looked at their prisoner, and at once recognised in him her husband Charoo. She was so over- joyed that she could hardly contain herself, so she desired the people to leave him there, promising them that she would see justice done. The prisoner was thereupon taken charge of by her attendants, and by her orders conducted to her private apartment. Charoo could not repress his surprise at the wonderful change he beheld in everything from what he saw on his former visit, and while he was revolving this in his mind, and trying to assign some cause for it, he was led away, not to prison, but to a richly-furnished apartment. He imagined that the sovereign who now treated him so kindly and the lady he saw on his last visit lying in the alcove asleep, and whose beauty made such a deep impres- sion on him, were one and the same person. He was, how- ever, soon after visited by the queen, attended by two slaves. Chitrangee could not help smiling when she saw Charoo gazing on her in evident confusion, as though he had been struck at first sight by her beauty. She on her part felt the deepest emotion, and, approaching her husband with tearful eyes, prostrated herself before him, saying, ‘ Dear Charoo!—I am agitated to tears with the unspeakable joy I experience at seeing you! Your presence in this place is more acceptable to me than heaps of wealth or any amount of splendour. You have dispelled the darkness of my soul,— all is now light and blithesome within me! You prove, by