So the Brahman took the girl with her attendants and returned to his own place.
But when the people of the country beheld her incomparable opulence of beauty, her supreme loveliness and superhuman graces, their eyes popped out with pleasure, and they said to her attendants: "How can right-thinking persons bestow such a pearl of a girl upon a snake?" On hearing this, all her elderly relatives without exception were troubled at heart, and they said: "Let her be taken from this imp-ridden creature." But the girl said: "No more of this mockery! Remember the text:
Do once, once only, these three things:
Once spoken, stands the word of kings;
The speech of saints has no miscarriage;
A maid is given once in marriage.
And again:
All fated happenings, derived
From any former state,
Must changeless stand: the very gods
Endured poor Blossom's fate."
Whereupon they all asked in chorus: "Who was this Blossom person?" And the girl told the story of
POOR BLOSSOM
God Indra once had a parrot named Blossom. He enjoyed supreme beauty, loveliness, and various graces, while his intelligence was not blunted by his extensive scientific attainments.
One day he was resting on the palm of great
