And the king said: "Listen. I will tell you why the boy laughed. When danger comes to any weak creature, he cries for life to his mother and father. If they are not there, he begs protection from the king, whom heaven made his protector. Failing the king, he cries to a god. Some one of these should be his protector. But in the case of this boy everything was contrary. His parents held his hands and feet because they wanted money. And the king was ready to kill him with his own hand, to save his own life. And the giant, who is a kind of a god, had come there especially to eat him. So the boy thought: They are ridiculously fooled about their bodies, which are fragile, worthless, the seat of pain and suffering. The bodies of the greatest gods perish. And such creatures as these imagine that their bodies will endure!' So when he saw their strange madness, and felt that his own wishes were fulfilled, the Brahman boy laughed in astonishment and delight." Then the goblin slipped from the king's shoulder and went back to his home. And the king followed with determination. The heart of a good man is like the heart of the ocean. It cannot be shaken. NINETEENTH GOBLIN _The Man, his Wife, and her Lover, who all died for Love. Which was the most foolish?_ Then the king went back under the sissoo tree, took the goblin on his shoulder, and set out in haste. And as he walked along, the goblin on his shoulder said: "O King, I will tell you a story about a great love. Listen." There is a city called Ujjain, which seems like a divine city made by the Creator for the pious who have fallen from heaven. In this city there was a famous king named Lotus-belly. He delighted the good, and defeated the king of the demons. While he was king, a merchant named Fortune, richer than the god of wealth, lived in the city. He had one daughter named Love-cluster, who seemed the model from whom the Creator had made the nymphs of heaven. This merchant gave his daughter to a merchant named Jewel-guard from Copper City. As he was a tender father and had no other children, the merchant stayed with his daughter Love-cluster and her husband. Now Love-cluster came to hate Jewel-guard as a sick man hates a pungent, biting medicine. But the beautiful woman was dearer than life to her husband, dear as long-fathered wealth to a miser. One day Jewel-guard started for Copper City to pay a loving visit to his parents. Then the hot summer came, and the roads were blocked for travellers by the sharp arrows of the sun. The winds blew soft with the fragrance of jasmine and trumpet-flower, like sighs from the mouths of mountains separated from the springtime. And wind-swept dust-clouds flew to the sky like messengers from the burning earth begging for clouds. And the feverish days moved slowly like wayfarers who cling to the shade of trees. And the nights clad in pale yellow moonlight became very feeble without the invigorating embrace of winter.