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

19 CHAPTER III. The same subject continued—Tale of the Alligator and the Traveller —The chief of the Bahooroopees disposes of the parrot to a wealthy merchant—A dancing-girl endeavours to extort money from the merchant by a false accusation, which is frustrated by the ingenuity of the parrot—The dancing-girl prevails upon the merchant to make her a present of the parrot—In revenge, she orders her slave to put him to death; but Veytal, the king of the demons, saves his life, and enables him to escape—The parrot flies to the temple of the Goddess Kallika. THE painful intelligence of the death of Vejydhwaj having reached his wife, whilst she was engaged in the queen's apartment, she instantly came to where the mutilated corpse of her husband was laid, and bewailed her misfor- tune in no measured terms, in the following frantic excla- mations:—"Oh! husband of my heart! my best beloved! —you were ever considered as a brave and unconquer- able warrior; your equal was not known; you were always victorious in all your encounters; by your courage and determination you have on more than forty-two different occasions ascended to heaven, to take part in the most dreadful of strifes, and yet were never vanquished. Oh! my heart's best treasure!—you have been my only support, and now that you are no more, where can I look for the means of subsistence? I am swallowed up in an ocean of grief, which is all the deeper in that I was not with you to tend you in your last dying moments. It was in vain that you placed me in charge of a king." The people, greatly affected by the excessive grief manifested by the warrior's wife, mingled their tears and sympathies with hers, which presented a spectacle truly melancholy. While she was thus lamenting the cruel fate which de- prived her of her husband, the king approached her, and, with much tenderness in his manner, said,—"I pray you,