you in this city, when you went away?"--"Prince Paduma." "And he," she went on, "came into my room, and I said, My son, do not so, I am your mother: but say what I would, he cried, None is king here but I, and I will take you to my dwelling, and enjoy your love; then he seized me by the hair of my head, and plucked it out again and again, and as I would not yield to his will, he wounded and beat me, and departed." The king made no investigation, but furious as a serpent, commanded his men, "Go and bind Prince Paduma, and bring him to me!" They went to his house, swarming as it were through the city, and bound him and beat him, bound his hands fast behind his back, put about his neck the garland of red flowers , making him a condemned criminal, and led him thither, beating him the while. It was clear to him that this was the queen's doing, and as he went along he cried out, "Ho fellows, I am not one that has offended against the king! I am innocent." All the city was a-bubble with the news: "They say the king is going to execute Prince Paduma at the bidding of a woman!" They flocked together, they fell at the prince's feet, lamenting with a great noise, "You have not deserved this, my lord!"

At last they brought him before the king. At sight of him, the king could not restrain what was in his heart, and cried out, "This fellow is no king, but he plays the king finely! My son he is, yet he has insulted the queen. Away with him, down with him over the thieves' cliff, make an end of him!" But the prince said to his father, "No such crime lies at my door, father. Do not kill me on a woman's word." The king would not listen to him. Then all those of the royal seraglio, in number sixteen thousand, raised a great lamentation, saying, "Dear Paduma, mighty Prince, this dealing you have never deserved!" [192] And all the warrior chiefs and great magnates of the land, and all the attendant courtiers cried, "My lord! the prince is a man of goodness and virtuous life, observes the traditions of his race, heir to the kingdom! Do not slay him at a woman's word, without a hearing! A king's duty it is to act with all circumspection." So saying, they repeated seven stanzas:

"No king should punish an offence, and hear no pleas at all,
Not throughly sifting it himself in all points, great and small .

"The warrior chief who punishes a fault before he tries,
Is like a man born blind, who eats his food all bones and flies.

"Who punishes the guiltless, and lets go the guilty, knows
No more than one who blind upon a rugged highway goes.

"He who all this examines well, in things both great and small,
And so administers, deserves to be the head of all.