Kitabı oku: «Vikram and the Vampire», sayfa 3

Having heard this speech, the king said to the master of his household, ‘Bring all the fruits which I have entrusted to thee.’ The treasurer, on receiving the royal command, immediately brought them, and having split them, there was found in each one a ruby, one and all equally perfect in size and water. Raja Vikram beholding such treasures was excessively pleased. Having sent for a lapidary, he ordered him to examine the rubies, saying, ‘We cannot take anything with us out of this world. Virtue is a noble quality to possess here below – so tell justly what is the value of each of these gems.’³⁵

To so moral a speech the lapidary replied, ‘Maharaja!³⁶ thou hast said truly; whoever possesses virtue, possesses everything; virtue indeed accompanies us always, and is of advantage in both worlds. Hear, O great king! each gem is perfect in colour, quality and beauty. If I were to say that the value of each was ten million millions of suvarnas (gold pieces), even then thou couldst not understand its real worth. In fact, each ruby would buy one of the seven regions into which the earth is divided.’

The king on hearing this was delighted, although his suspicions were not satisfied; and, having bestowed a robe of honour upon the lapidary, dismissed him. Thereon, taking the young merchant’s hand, he led him into the palace, seated him upon his own carpet in presence of the court, and began to say, ‘My entire kingdom is not worth one of these rubies: tell me how it is that thou who buyest and sellest hast given me such and so many pearls?’

Mal Deo replied: ‘O great king, the speaking of matters like the following in public is not right; these things – prayers, spells, drugs, good qualities, household affairs, the eating of forbidden food, and the evil we may have heard of our neighbour – should not be discussed in full assembly. Privately I will disclose to thee my wishes. This is the way of the world; when an affair comes to six ears, it does not remain secret; if a matter is confided to four ears it may escape further hearing; and if to two ears even Bramha the Creator does not know it; how then can any rumour of it come to man?’

Having heard this speech, Raja Vikram took Mal Deo aside, and began to ask him, saying, ‘O generous man! you have given me so many rubies, and even for a single day you have not eaten food with me; I am exceedingly ashamed, tell me what you desire.’

‘Raja,’ said the young merchant, ‘I am not Mal Deo, but Shanta-Shil,³⁷ a devotee. I am about to perform spells, incantations and magical rites on the banks of the river Godavari, in a large smashana, a cemetery where bodies are burned. By this means the Eight Powers of Nature will all become mine. This thing I ask of you as alms, that you and the young prince Dharma Dhwaj will pass one night with me, doing my bidding. By you remaining near me my incantations will be successful.’

The valiant Vikram nearly started from his seat at the word cemetery, but, like a ruler of men, he restrained his face from expressing his feelings, and he presently replied, ‘Good, we will come, tell us on what day!’

‘You are to come to me,’ said the devotee, ‘armed, but without followers, on the Monday evening the 14th of the dark half of the month Bhadra.’³⁸ The Raja said: ‘Do you go your ways, we will certainly come.’ In this manner, having received a promise from the king, and having taken leave, the devotee returned to his house: thence he repaired to the temple, and having made preparations, and taken all the necessary things, he went back into the cemetery and sat down to his ceremonies.

The valiant Vikram, on the other hand, retired into an inner apartment, to consult his own judgment about an adventure with which, for fear of ridicule, he was unwilling to acquaint even the most trustworthy of his ministers.

In due time came the evening moon’s day, the 14th of the dark half of the month Bhadra. As the short twilight fell gloomily on earth, the warrior king, accompanied by his son, with turband-ends tied under their chins, and with trusty blades tucked under their arms ready for foes, human, bestial, or devilish, slipped out unseen through the palace wicket, and took the road leading to the cemetery on the river bank.

Dark and drear was the night. Urged by the furious blast of the lingering winter-rains, masses of bistre-coloured cloud, like the forms of unwieldy beasts, rolled heavily over the firmament plain. Whenever the crescent of the young moon, rising from an horizon sable as the sad Tamala’s hue,³⁹ glanced upon the wayfarers, it was no brighter than the fine tip of an elephant’s tusk protruding from the muddy wave. A heavy storm was impending; big drops fell in showers from the forest trees as they groaned under the blast, and beneath the gloomy avenue the clayey ground gleamed ghastly white. As the Raja and his son advanced, a faint ray of light, like the line of pure gold streaking the dark surface of the touchstone, caught their eyes, and directed their footsteps towards the cemetery.

When Vikram came upon the open space on the river bank where corpses were burned, he hesitated for a moment to tread its impure ground. But seeing his son undismayed, he advanced boldly, trampling upon remnants of bones, and only covering his mouth with his turband-end.

Presently, at the further extremity of the smashana or burning ground, appeared a group. By the lurid flames that flared and flickered round the half-extinguished funeral pyres, with remnants of their dreadful loads, Raja Vikram and Dharma Dhwaj could note the several features of the ill-omened spot. There was an outer circle of hideous bestial forms; tigers were roaring, and elephants were trumpeting; wolves, whose foul hairy coats blazed with sparks of bluish phosphoric light, were devouring the remnants of human bodies; foxes, jackals, and hyenas were disputing over their prey; whilst bears were chewing the livers of children. The space within was peopled by a multitude of fiends. There were the subtle bodies of men that had escaped their grosser frames prowling about the charnel ground, where their corpses had been reduced to ashes, or hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which they were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs; and skeletons, whose mouldy bones were held together by bits of blackened sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim. Malignant witches with shrivelled skins, horrid eyes and distorted forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; whilst spectres and goblins now stood motionless, and tall as lofty palm trees; then, as if in fits, leaped, danced, and tumbled before their evocator. The air was filled with shrill and strident cries, with the fitful moaning of the storm-wind, with the hooting of the owl, with the jackal’s long wild cry, and with the hoarse gurgling of the swollen river, from whose banks the earth-slip thundered in its fall.

In the midst of all, close to the fire which lit up his evil countenance, sat Shanta-Shil, the jogi, with the banner that denoted his calling and his magic staff planted in the ground behind him. He was clad in the ochre-coloured loin-wrap of his class; from his head streamed long tangled locks of hair like horsehair; his black body was striped with lines of chalk, and a girdle of thigh bones encircled his waist. His face was smeared with ashes from a funeral pyre, and his eyes, fixed as those of a statue, gleamed from this mask with an infernal light of hate. His cheeks were shaven, and he had not forgotten to draw the horizontal sectarian mark. But this was of blood; and Vikram, as he drew near, saw that he was playing upon a human skull with two shank bones, making music for the horrid revelry.

Now Raja Vikram, as has been shown by his encounter with Indra’s watchman, was a bold prince, and he was cautious as he was brave. The sight of a human being in the midst of these terrors raised his mettle; he determined to prove himself a hero, and feeling that the critical moment was now come, he hoped to rid himself and his house for ever of the family curse that hovered over them.

For a moment he thought of the giant’s words, ‘And remember that it is lawful and right to strike off his head that would slay thee.’ A stroke with his good sword might at once and effectually put an end to the danger. But then he remembered that he had passed his royal word to do the devotee’s bidding that night. Besides, he felt assured that the hour for action had not yet sounded.

These reflections having passed through his mind with the rapid course of a star that has lost its honours,⁴⁰ Vikram courteously saluted Shanta-Shil. The jogi briefly replied, ‘Come sit down, both of ye.’ The father and son took their places, by no means surprised or frightened by the devil dances before and around them. Presently the valiant Raja reminded the devotee that he was come to perform his promise, and lastly asked, ‘What commands are there for us?’

The jogi replied, ‘O king, since you have come, just perform one piece of business. About two kos⁴¹ hence, in a southerly direction, there is another place where dead bodies are burned; and in that place is a mimosa tree, on which a body is hanging. Bring it to me immediately.’

Raja Vikram took his son’s hand, unwilling to leave him in such company; and, catching up a firebrand, went rapidly away in the proper direction. He was now certain that Shanta-Shil was the anchorite who, enraged by his father, had resolved his destruction; and his uppermost thought was a firm resolve ‘to breakfast upon his enemy, ere his enemy could dine upon him.’ He muttered this old saying as he went, whilst the tom-tom-ing of the anchorite upon the skull resounded in his ears, and the devil-crowd, which had held its peace during his meeting with Shanta-Shil, broke out again in an infernal din of whoops and screams, yells and laughter.

The darkness of the night was frightful, the gloom deepened till it was hardly possible to walk. The clouds opened their fountains, raining so that you would say they could never rain again. Lightning blazed forth with more than the light of day, and the roar of the thunder caused the earth to shake. Baleful gleams tipped the black cones of the trees and fitfully scampered like fireflies over the waste. Unclean goblins dogged the travellers and threw themselves upon the ground in their path and obstructed them in a thousand different ways. Huge snakes, whose mouths distilled blood and black venom, kept clinging around their legs in the roughest part of the road, till they were persuaded to loose their hold either by the sword or by reciting a spell. In fact there were so many horrors and such a tumult and noise that even a brave man would have faltered, yet the king kept on his way.

At length having passed over, somehow or other, a very difficult road, the Raja arrived at the smashana, or burning place pointed out by the jogi. Suddenly he sighted the tree where from root to top every branch and leaf was in a blaze of crimson flame. And when he, still dauntless, advanced towards it, a clamour continued to be raised, and voices kept crying, ‘Kill them! kill them! seize them! seize them! take care that they do not get away! let them scorch themselves to cinders! let them suffer the pains of Patala.’⁴²

Far from being terrified by this state of things the valiant Raja increased in boldness, seeing a prospect of an end to his adventure. Approaching the tree he felt that the fire did not burn him, and so he sat there for a while to observe the body, which hung, head downwards, from a branch a little above him.

Its eyes, which were wide open, were of a greenish-brown, and never twinkled; its hair also was brown,⁴³ and brown was its face – three several shades which, notwithstanding, approached one another in an unpleasant way, as in an over-dried cocoa-nut. Its body was thin and ribbed like a skeleton or a bamboo framework, and as it held on to a bough, like a flying fox,⁴⁴ by the toe-tips, its drawn muscles stood out as if they were ropes of coir. Blood it appeared to have none, or there would have been a decided determination of that curious juice to the head; and as the Raja handled its skin, it felt icy cold and clammy as might a snake. The only sign of life was the whisking of a ragged little tail much resembling a goat’s.

Judging from these signs the brave king at once determined the creature to be a Baital – a Vampire. For a short time he was puzzled to reconcile the appearance with the words of the giant, who informed him that the anchorite had hung the oilman’s son to a tree. But soon he explained to himself the difficulty, remembering the exceeding cunning of jogis and other reverend men, and determining that his enemy, the better to deceive him, had doubtless altered the shape and form of the young oilman’s body.

With this idea, Vikram was pleased, saying, ‘My trouble has been productive of fruit.’ Remained the task of carrying the Vampire to Shanta-Shil the devotee. Having taken his sword, the Raja fearlessly climbed the tree, and ordering his son to stand away from below, clutched the Vampire’s hair with one hand, and with the other struck such a blow of the sword, that the bough was cut and the thing fell heavily upon the ground. Immediately on falling it gnashed its teeth and began to utter a loud wailing cry like the screams of an infant in pain. Vikram having heard the sound of its lamentations, was pleased, and began to say to himself, ‘This devil must be alive.’ Then nimbly sliding down the trunk, he made a captive of the body, and asked ‘Who art thou?’

Scarcely, however, had the words passed the royal lips, when the Vampire slipped through the fingers like a worm, and uttering a loud shout of laughter, rose in the air with its legs uppermost, and as before suspended itself by its toes to another bough. And there it swung to and fro, moved by the violence of its cachinnation.

‘Decidedly this is the young oilman!’ exclaimed the Raja, after he had stood for a minute or two with mouth open, gazing upwards and wondering what he should do next. Presently he directed Dharma Dhwaj not to lose an instant in laying hands upon the thing when it next might touch the ground, and then he again swarmed up the tree. Having reached his former position, he once more seized the Baital’s hair, and with all the force of his arms – for he was beginning to feel really angry – he tore it from its hold and dashed it to the ground, saying, ‘O wretch, tell me who thou art?’

Then, as before, the Raja slid deftly down the trunk, and hurried to the aid of his son, who, in obedience to orders, had fixed his grasp upon the Vampire’s neck. Then too, as before, the Vampire, laughing aloud, slipped through their fingers and returned to its dangling-place.

To fail twice was too much for Raja Vikram’s temper, which was right kingly and somewhat hot. This time he bade his son strike the Baital’s head with his sword. Then, more like a wounded bear of Himalaya than a prince who had established an era, he hurried up the tree, and directed a furious blow with his sabre at the Vampire’s lean and calfless legs. The violence of the stroke made its toes loose their hold of the bough, and when it touched the ground, Dharma Dhwaj’s blade fell heavily upon its matted brown hair. But the blows appeared to have lighted on iron-wood – to judge at least from the behaviour of the Baital, who no sooner heard the question, ‘O wretch, who art thou?’ than it returned in loud glee and merriment to its old position.

Five mortal times did Raja Vikram repeat this profitless labour. But so far from losing heart, he quite entered into the spirit of the adventure. Indeed he would have continued climbing up that tree and taking that corpse under his arm – he found his sword useless – and bringing it down, and asking it who it was, and seeing it slip through his fingers, six times sixty times, or till the end of the fourth and present age,⁴⁵ had such extreme resolution been required.

However, it was not necessary. On the seventh time of falling, the Baital, instead of eluding its capturer’s grasp, allowed itself to be seized, merely remarking that ‘even the gods cannot resist a thoroughly obstinate man.’⁴⁶ And seeing that the stranger, for the better protection of his prize, had stripped off his waistcloth and was making it into a bag, the Vampire thought proper to seek the most favourable conditions for himself, and asked his conqueror who he was, and what he was about to do?

‘Vile wretch,’ replied the breathless hero, ‘know me to be Vikram the Great, Raja of Ujjayani, and I bear thee to a man who is amusing himself by drumming to devils on a skull.’

‘Remember the old saying, mighty Vikram!’ said the Baital, with a sneer, ‘that many a tongue has cut many a throat. I have yielded to thy resolution and I am about to accompany thee, bound to thy back like a beggar’s wallet. But hearken to my words, ere we set out upon the way. I am of a loquacious disposition, and it is well nigh an hour’s walk between this tree and the place where thy friend sits, favouring his friends with the peculiar music which they love. Therefore, I shall try to distract my thoughts, which otherwise might not be of the most pleasing nature, by means of sprightly tales and profitable reflections. Sages and men of sense spend their days in the delights of light and heavy literature, whereas dolts and fools waste time in sleep and idleness. And I purpose to ask thee a number of questions, concerning which we will, if it seems fit to thee, make this covenant:

‘Whenever thou answerest me, either compelled by Fate or entrapped by my cunning into so doing, or thereby gratifying thy vanity and conceit, I leave thee and return to my favourite place and position in the siras-tree, but when thou shalt remain silent, confused, and at a loss to reply, either through humility or thereby confessing thine ignorance, and impotence, and want of comprehension, then will I allow thee, of mine own free will, to place me before thine employer. Perhaps I should not say so; it may sound like bribing thee, but – take my counsel, and mortify thy pride, and assumption, and arrogance, and haughtiness, as soon as possible. So shalt thou derive from me a benefit which none but myself can bestow.’

Raja Vikram hearing these rough words, so strange to his royal ear, winced; then he rejoiced that his heir-apparent was not near; then he looked round at his son Dharma Dhwaj, to see if he was impertinent enough to be amused by the Baital. But the first glance showed him the young prince busily employed in pinching and screwing the monster’s legs, so as to make it fit better into the cloth. Vikram then seized the ends of the waistcloth, twisted them into a convenient form for handling, stooped, raised the bundle with a jerk, tossed it over his shoulder, and bidding his son not to lag behind, set off at a round pace towards the western end of the cemetery.

The shower had ceased, and, as they gained ground, the weather greatly improved.

The Vampire asked a few indifferent questions about the wind and the rain and the mud. When he received no answer, he began to feel uncomfortable, and he broke out with these words: ‘O King Vikram, listen to the true story which I am about to tell thee.’

IN WHICH A MAN DECEIVES A WOMAN

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut, to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning, the young man, accompanied by the son of his father’s pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far into the jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a beautiful ‘tank’⁴⁷ of a prodigious size. It was surrounded by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of cut-stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair, and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose thick shade the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the birds sang sweetly; the grey squirrels⁴⁸ chirruped joyously as they coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the pendent llianas the long-tailed monkeys were swinging sportively. The bountiful hand of Sravana⁴⁹ had spread the earthen rampart with a carpet of the softest grass and many-hued wild flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees and myriads of bright-winged insects; and flocks of water-fowl, wild geese, Brahmini ducks, bitterns, herons, and cranes, male and female, were feeding on the narrow strip of brilliant green that belted the long deep pool, amongst the broad-leaved lotuses with the lovely blossoms, splashing through the pellucid waves, and basking happily in the genial sun.

The prince and his friend wondered when they saw the beautiful tank in the midst of a wild forest, and made many vain conjectures about it. They dismounted, tethered their horses, and threw their weapons upon the ground; then, having washed their hands and faces, they entered a shrine dedicated to Mahadeva, and there began to worship the presiding deity.

Whilst they were making their offerings, a bevy of maidens, accompanied by a crowd of female slaves, descended the opposite flight of steps. They stood there for a time, talking and laughing and looking about them to see if any alligators infested the waters. When convinced that the tank was safe, they disrobed themselves in order to bathe. It was truly a splendid spectacle —

‘Concerning which the less said the better,’ interrupted Raja Vikram in an offended tone.⁵⁰

– but it did not last long. The Raja’s daughter – for the principal maiden was a princess – soon left her companions, who were scooping up water with their palms and dashing it over one another’s heads, and proceeded to perform the rites of purification, meditation, and worship. Then she began strolling with a friend under the shade of a small mango grove.

The prince also left his companion sitting in prayer, and walked forth into the forest. Suddenly the eyes of the Raja’s son and the Raja’s daughter met. She started back with a little scream. He was fascinated by her beauty, and began to say to himself, ‘O thou vile Kama,⁵¹ why worriest thou me?’

Hearing this, the maiden smiled encouragement, but the poor youth, between palpitation of the heart and hesitation about what to say, was so confused that his tongue clave to his teeth. She raised her eyebrows a little. There is nothing which women despise in a man more than modesty,⁵² for mo-des-ty —

A violent shaking of the bag which hung behind Vikram’s royal back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to preserve more decorum in his observations.

Still the prince stood before her with downcast eyes and suffused cheeks: even the spur of contempt failed to arouse his energies. Then the maiden called to her friend, who was picking jasmine flowers so as not to witness the scene, and angrily asked why that strange man was allowed to stand and stare at her? The friend, in hot wrath, threatened to call the slave, and to throw Vajramukut into the pond unless he instantly went away with his impudence. But as the prince was rooted to the spot, and really had not heard a word of what had been said to him, the two women were obliged to make the first move.

As they almost reached the tank, the beautiful maiden turned her head to see what the poor modest youth was doing.

Vajramukut was formed in every way to catch a woman’s eye. The Raja’s daughter therefore half forgave him his offence of mod – . Again she sweetly smiled, disclosing two rows of little opals. Then descending to the water’s edge, she stooped down and plucked a lotus. This she worshipped; next she placed it in her hair, then she put it to her ear, then she bit it with her teeth, then she trod upon it with her foot, then she raised it up again, and lastly she stuck it in her bosom. After which she mounted her conveyance and went home to her friends; whilst the prince, having become thoroughly desponding and drowned in grief at separation from her, returned to the minister’s son.

‘Females!’ ejaculated the minister’s son, speaking to himself in a careless tone, when, his prayer finished, he left the temple, and sat down upon the tank steps to enjoy the breeze. He presently drew a roll of paper from under his waist-belt, and in a short time was engrossed with his study. The women seeing this conduct, exerted themselves in every possible way of wile to attract his attention and to distract his soul. They succeeded only so far as to make him roll his head with a smile, and to remember that such is always the custom of man’s bane; after which he turned over a fresh page of manuscript. And although he presently began to wonder what had become of the prince his master, he did not look up even once from his study.

He was a philosopher, that young man. But after all, Raja Vikram, what is mortal philosophy? Nothing but another name for indifference! Who was ever philosophical about a thing truly loved or really hated? – no one! Philosophy, says Shankharacharya, is either the gift of nature or the reward of study. But I, the Baital, the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher? – a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher? – a leucophlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your Rajaship’s Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such wise fools.

Then the prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, ‘O friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra’s heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the child of an earthly Raja, I cannot say.’

‘Describe her,’ said the statesman in embryo.

‘Her face,’ quoth the prince, ‘was that of the full moon, her hair like a swarm of bees hanging from the blossoms of the acacia, the corners of her eyes touched her ears, her lips were sweet with lunar ambrosia, her waist was that of a lion, and her walk the walk of a king-goose.⁵³ As a garment, she was white; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the jasmine; as a speaker, the kokila bird; as a perfume, musk; as a beauty, Kama-deva; and as a being, Love. And if she does not come into my possession I will not live; this I have certainly determined upon.’

The young minister, who had heard his prince say the same thing more than once before, did not attach great importance to these awful words. He merely remarked that, unless they mounted at once, night would surprise them in the forest. Then the two young men returned to their horses, untethered them, drew on their bridles, saddled them, and catching up their weapons, rode slowly towards the Raja’s palace. During the three hours of return hardly a word passed between the pair. Vajramukut not only avoided speaking; he never once replied till addressed thrice in the loudest voice.

The young minister put no more questions, ‘for,’ quoth he to himself, ‘when the prince wants my counsel, he will apply for it.’ In this point he had borrowed wisdom from his father, who held in peculiar horror the giving of unasked-for advice. So, when he saw that conversation was irksome to his master, he held his peace and meditated upon what he called his ‘day-thought.’ It was his practice to choose every morning some tough food for reflection, and to chew the cud of it in his mind at times when, without such employment, his wits would have gone wool-gathering. You may imagine, Raja Vikram, that with a few years of this head-work, the minister’s son became a very crafty young person.

After the second day the Prince Vajramukut, being restless from grief at separation, fretted himself into a fever. Having given up writing, reading, drinking, sleeping, the affairs entrusted to him by his father, and everything else, he sat down, as he said, to die. He used constantly to paint the portrait of the beautiful lotus gatherer, and to lie gazing upon it with tearful eyes; then he would start up and tear it to pieces and beat his forehead, and begin another picture of a yet more beautiful face.

At last, as the pradhan’s son had foreseen, he was summoned by the young Raja, whom he found upon his bed, looking yellow and complaining bitterly of headache. Frequent discussions upon the subject of the tender passion had passed between the two youths, and one of them had ever spoken of it so very disrespectfully that the other felt ashamed to introduce it. But when his friend, with a view to provoke communicativeness, advised a course of boiled and bitter herbs and great attention to diet, quoting the hemistich attributed to the learned physician Charndatta —

 
A fever starve, but feed a cold,
 

the unhappy Vajramukut’s fortitude abandoned him; he burst into tears, and exclaimed, ‘Whosoever enters upon the path of love cannot survive it; and if (by chance) he should live, what is life to him but a prolongation of his misery?’

‘Yea,’ replied the minister’s son, ‘the sage hath said —

 
The road of love is that which hath no beginning nor end;
Take thou heed of thyself, man! ere thou place foot upon it.
 

And the wise, knowing that there are three things whose effect upon himself no man can foretell – namely, desire of woman, the dice-box, and the drinking of ardent spirits – find total abstinence from them the best of rules. Yet, after all, if there is no cow, we must milk the bull.’

The advice was, of course, excellent, but the hapless lover could not help thinking that on this occasion it came a little too late. However, after a pause he returned to the subject and said, ‘I have ventured to tread that dangerous way, be its end pain or pleasure, happiness or destruction.’ He then hung down his head and sighed from the bottom of his heart.