They sat down while the Nawab related
the story of the maiden whose goodness it commemorated.
"Sangita," said he, "was a princess of incomparable beauty and
surpassing gentleness. Her spirit was humble; and as the heavenly
streams of wisdom and virtue seek lowly places, her nature shone every
day with a purer lustre. She loved tenderly a gazelle which she had
reared, and which was the companion of her happy hours. It was not of
the King's flocks but had been found in Sangita's own garden, and none
knew who had brought it there. The talkative people, noting the sagacity
of the pretty creature and the tender solicitude of its mistress, who
crowned it anew with garlands every morning and fed it with sweetest
milk and the loveliest flower buds, whispered to one another of its
mysterious appearance, and alleged for it miraculous origin. One day as
it fed among lilies, the princess near by, overcome by the heat,
slumbered. She slept long and heavily, and when she awoke her favourite
was nowhere to be seen. Calling and weeping, she wandered through vale
and glade, searching the hare's covert, but starting back, for she
descried a viper there; peering into the den of a wild beast and
shuddering, for it was strewn with bones; hastening to a gorgeous clump
of bloom where she thought it might have rested, but the splendid
blossoms were poisonous and she turned away. All the dark, damp,
dangerous night she sought, and it was morning when she found the gentle
creature stretched on the moss, its piteous eyes glazed over with death,
for it had been pursued and had sunk from exhaustion.
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