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

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words that was directed against him; at the same time pro- claiming his innocence with a loud voice, and protesting against the whole proceeding as being illegal and informal, as well as unjust and tyrannical. He then sent for his cashier, and ordered the amount to be brought into court. While, however, Dushwant was in the act of making over the money, it occurred to him that he had not consulted once, throughout the whole of this proceeding, his invaluable and bosom friend, the parrot; he thought that by repre- senting the injustice of the case to him, the good sense and intelligence which the bird displayed on every occasion of emergency might perchance enable him to devise some means to extricate him from the dilemma in which he found himself placed; so he solicited the king to allow him time to send for the parrot, before paying down the money. Having obtained the king's consent to this step, a messen- ger was immediately despatched, and the bird brought into the presence of the king and the assembled courtiers. He was placed in an elevated position, and made acquainted with all the details of the occurrence. The parrot seemed much surprised at the revelations made to him, and still more so at the daring act of injustice on the part of the king, of whom he enquired, and of his councillors, how they could possibly be so blind as not to see through the guile of the girl, and the unworthy motives which led her into such an act. He begged the king to countermand the order for the fine, and then, in an address fraught with much politeness and good sense, entreated that his majesty would not permit himself to be thus hood- winked by a mercenary woman. So saying, the parrot desired that a large looking-glass, of which there were many in the palace, might be brought to him; when the domestic came forward with the glass, the parrot ordered the amount of the fine levied by the king to be placed in front of it, which having been done, he spoke in this wise, addressing himself in the first instance to the com- plainant in the case:—"Is it true, then, as you have