35. Covetousness stretches itself long and wide and presents to us a variety of hues as the rainbow. It is equally unsubstantial and without any property as the iris, resting in vapour and vacuum and being but a shadow itself. 36. It burns away our good qualities as electric fire does the hay; it numbs our good sense as the frost freezes the lotus; it grows our evils as autumn does the grass; and it increases our ignorance as the winter prolongs the night. 37. Greediness is as an actress in the stage of the world; she is as a bird flying out of the nest of our houses; as a deer running about in the desert of our hearts; and as a lute making us sing and dance at its tune. 38. Our desires like billows toss us about in the ocean of our earthly cares; they bind us fast to delusion as fetters do the elephant. Like the _ficus indicus_ they produce the roots of our regeneration, and like moon beams they put our budding woes to bloom. 39. Avarice like (Pandora’s) box is filled with miseries, decrepitude and death, and is full of disorder and disasters like a mad bacchanal. 40. Our wishes are sometimes as pure as light and at others as foul as darkness; now they are as clear as the milky way, and again as obscure as thickest mists. 41. All our bodily troubles are avoided by our abstaining from avarice, as we are freed from fear of night goblins at the dispersion of darkness. 42. So long do men remain in their state of (dead like) dumbness and mental delirium, as they are subject to the poisonous cholic of avarice. 43. Men may get rid of their misery by their being freed from anxieties. It is the abandonment of cares which is said to be the best remedy of avarice. 44. As the fishes in a pond fondly grasp the bait in expectation of a sop, so do the avaricious lay hold on any thing, be it wood or stone or even a straw. 45. Avarice like an acute pain excites even the gravest of men to motion, just as the rays of the sun raise the lotus blossoms (above the water). 46. It is compared with the bamboo in its length, hollowness, hard knots, and thorny prickles, and yet it is entertained in expectation of its yielding the manna and a pearly substance. 47. Yet it is a wonder that high-minded men, have been able to cut off this almost unseverable knot of avarice, by the glittering sword of reason: 48. As neither the edge of the sword, nor the fire of lightening, nor the sparks of the red-hot iron, are sharp enough to sever the keen avarice seated in our hearts. 49. It is like the flame of a lamp which is bright but blackening and acutely burning at its end. It is fed by the oily wicks (of years), is vivid in all, but never handled by any body. 50. Penury has the power of bemeaning the best of men to (the baseness of) straws in a moment, notwithstanding their wisdom, heroism and gravity in other respects.