To get a sight of you was no easy matter; hence I believe that something good is about to befall me.” “It is now dusk, my son,” said the hermit, “and your city is some five hundred and sixty miles away.

Listen and be discreet; the night is dark, the forest dense and the path not easy to find; then stay here tonight and start tomorrow at dawn.”

As destiny decrees, says Tulasi, so help appears; either it comes to a man or it leads him away to the cause of his doom.

“Very well, my lord,” the king replied; and, bowing to the hermit’s command, he tied up his horse to a tree and took his seat. The king extolled him in many ways, and doing homage to his feet, congratulated himself on his own good fortune.

He then addressed him in soft and winning terms; “Lord, I am being presumptuous, as to a father; treat me, great sage, as your son and servant and tell me, lord, your name and all about yourself in detail.”

Although the king did not recognize the hermit, the latter recognized the king. The king had a guileless heart, but the hermit was a master of deceit. Being the king’s enemy in the first instance, and then of the warrior caste and a prince, he sought to accomplish his own ends by force or fraud.

The enemy remembered the pleasures of royalty and was sad; the fire of jealousy smouldered within his heart like that of a furnace. On hearing the artless words of Pratapabhanu and recalling the grudge he had nursed against him, the hermit was glad at heart.