He shut himself up in solitude, and refused nourishment. Then a faithful friend persuaded him that travelling might bring relief. They pursued their way to the Vindhya Hills; the sun was about to set as they entered a wilderness. The friend collected roots and fruits, and the young prince fell asleep on a couch, made up of branches from the trees; but not for long. For he was awakened by the conversation of two birds who nestled in the jambu tree above him. The female bird was reproaching the male for coming home so late, fearing that he must have been dangling after some other _sarikâ_. The male bird replies solemnly that he has been attending to a transaction most unprecedented. He then relates that in the city of Kusumapura, (probably Patna) there is a lovely princess, named, Vasavadattâ. Being of full age, the king, her father, invited ‘the high-born heirs of many principalities,’ that she might choose a husband. The suitors came, and the damsel took her place upon a daïs to survey them; but no one pleased her, and she and they withdrew in disappointment. At night, the young prince who had fallen in love with her in a dream, appeared to her in a vision; and she felt at once that he was her destined husband. The vision made known his name, which was Kandarpaketu; but she suffers torments of love and grief from not knowing how to meet with him. Under these circumstances her confidante volunteers to go in search for him, and says the bird, she arrived here when I did, and is at this moment beneath our tree. The lovesick prince no sooner heard this welcome intelligence than he introduced himself to the confidante, talked with her for twenty-four hours, (much too long, one would think) and then went with her to Kusumapura. Here he found the lovely Vasavadattâ in a garden-house of ivory. On seeing each other they faint for joy, and afterwards rehearse their past sufferings. The confidante speaks for the princess, and says that ‘if the heavens were a tablet, the sea an inkstand, the longevous Brahma an amanuensis, and the king of serpents the narrator, only a trifling part of those agonies could be told.’