So then Aranyani grew up alone with her father in the forest, with her identity disguised, turned as it were from a queen into a woodman's daughter, and lying hidden and unknown, like a pearl in an ocean shell. And yet she resembled fire, that refuses to be concealed, betraying its true nature through no matter what envelops it, and shining through, by chinks and holes, the wrapping that would hide it, even when it does not burn. For brought up in the forest though she was, and half alone, since her father often left her by herself, all day long, yet strange to say! the rudeness of her wild condition ran over her, leaving her soul untouched, like the water running in crystal drops that beautify but do not wet the neck of a royal swan. And one day she was discovered like a treasure in the wood by a band of hermits' daughters, that were roaming at a distance from the hermitage, away in the forest's heart. And those daughters of the sages all fell suddenly in love with her at once, not only for her eyes, that reminded them of the deer that were their playmates in their home, but still more for the strange and wild sweetness of her soul, that resembled absolutely nothing but itself. And every now and then, they used to come and play with her, when they rambled in the wood, telling her innumerable stories which they heard from their fathers, those mines of sacred wisdom. And then, very soon, those daughters of the hermits found, to their amazement, that they resembled fools, pouring water into a well. For she remembered everything when she had only heard it once,[26] and meditating over it alone, not only squeezed out of its mango all the juice which it contained, but planted its kernel like a seed of heavenly wisdom in her heart, and watering it with her own imagination, turned it presently into a new and strange tree, loaded with peculiar flowers and fruits of its own: so that as she grew gradually up, she resembled a receptacle of the essence of old lore, mixed with a native and original savour of herself. Ha! very wonderful indeed are the influences that rise up out of a former birth, since even in this lower form of a hunter's daughter the nature of that incomparable goddess overflowed, like a holy sap in the dark heart of a forest tree, and welled out abundantly, till it covered the coarse bark with fragrant buds and shoots, and flowers of immortal scent and hue. For her body kept pace with the progress of her soul, as if out of rivalry and jealousy unwilling to lag behind it, in the acquisition of ornaments and graces. And having no other models, it found itself obliged to imitate the objects that made up the atmosphere and soil in which it grew: till at last the deer and the blue lotuses gazed upon her eyes, and the red fruits and _gunja_ berries at her lips, and the creepers at her arms, with envy and amazement: and the _tamala_ shadows turned pale when they looked at her hair, and the trunks of the