The Bengali Poem , Candi. 
37 
It still holds true; if ten your conduct blame, 
And you stand out, then woe betide your fame ! ” 
Meanwhile the host, while loudly thus they brawl, 
Steals out dismayed to scold the cause of all. 
“What craze possessed you, Lahana, to send your co-wife to the wood 
To tend her goats—you ’ll rue the day—left houseless in the solitude ? 
You promised me to keep her safe ; basely have you betrayed the trust; 
For your own ends you ’ve ruined her and dragged my honour in the dust. 
A king will vex by open force, by slanderous tongues our kith and kin; 
A serpent by its spring and bite—but yours a deadlier wound has been. 
I married her to have a son, to build for me a bridge to heaven, 
That so the ancestral offerings, when I was gone, might still be given. 
For who is like the sonless man—what bitterness is such as his? 
In the three worlds he has no hope—life is one string of miseries. 
What is my life now worth ? Go bring a knife or poison, let me die ; 
We shall be glad then, both of us, but not e’en you so much as I.” 
From her he goes to Khullana, and urges her by every plea 
To shun th’ ordeal’s unknown risks and calmly face the calumny. 
“Leave the ordeal’s test alone ; stay still at home, your proper place. 
Were you by some ill chance to fail, how could I look men in the face ? 
E’en should there be some fault in you, ’t is not for me to utter blame; 
’T was I who left you thus exposed; ill I deserve a husband’s name. 
You wandered in the wood alone—women are weak by nature all; 
Old stories swarm with precedents how soon they, left uncared for, fall. 
Cease then your fear, I ’ll pay the sum, and should some cross-grained 
wretch still pout, 
I ’ll pay it down a second time—my purse will yet a while hold out.” 
“ 0 foolish husband, if you give to-day, 
Year after year you ’ll have the same to pay. 
Year after year they ’ll wring by force their claim, 
And far and wide will blow my tale of shame. 
