How conveniently the race of Rakshasas could assume at will the forms in which they chose to appear, we know already. Taking advantage of this faculty of metamorphosis, a Rakshasa named Maricha, in obedience to Ravana’s orders, showed himself near Rama’s hermitage, in the shape of a wonderful golden deer, spotted with silver, having horns resembling jewels, a belly like a sapphire, and sides like _madbuka_ flowers. The strange creature captivated the fancy of Sita, and she was so eager to possess it, alive or dead, that Rama was induced to go in pursuit of it. Suspecting mischief from this unusual appearance, Rama left his brother with Sita, commanding him on no account to quit her side until he returned from his pursuit of the jewelled deer. The chase led him to a considerable distance from the hermitage. Weary of his endeavours to secure the deer, Rama grew angry, and, with one of his flaming arrows, pierced it in the breast. It bounded off the ground to the height of a palm tree and, in the act of dying, began to cry, exactly in the voice of Rama, “Ah! Sita; Ah! Lakshmana.” The words reached the hermitage, as they were intended to do, and Sita, in an agony of terror, implored Lakshmana to go to the aid of his brother, who seemed to be in some dire trouble. Lakshmana, however, protested that it was all illusion, and refused to believe that Rama could be in any real danger; for, as he assured the trembling wife, “even the Almighty Himself with the celestials and the three worlds cannot defeat him” (Dutt, 609). But Vaidehi took another view of the matter, and turning sharply upon her brother-in-law accused him roundly of desiring the destruction of Rama in order that he might gratify an improper wish to possess her himself. This, indeed, she said, must have been the reason that brought him all the way from Ayodhya. What, if any, grounds the charming lady may have had for this accusation does not appear. They could have been known only to herself and to Lakshmana, who, with joined hands, humbly reproached her for her cruel words, and bending low before her went off, with a heavy heart, in search of his brother. In a garment (probably a _saree_) of yellow silk, Sita sat alone at the door of her thatched cottage, weeping bitterly, when Ravana presented himself before her, in the guise of a pious medicant. Ravished by her beauty, this pious medicant began, without ceremony, to praise the various charms of Sita’s person with the most reprehensible license of detail. Nor did he stop there, but telling her that she had carried away his heart, as a stream carries away its banks, invited her to accompany him out of the gloomy forest, tenanted by Rakshasas and wild beasts, and quite unfit for the abode of a goddess like herself.