‘It must needs be,’ sighed the King, after a pause; ’but what ill-fortune!’

‘If it please your Majesty, no,’ replied the Minister; ’it is written—­

    “’Tis the fool who, meeting trouble, straightway destiny reviles;
    Knowing not his own misdoing brought his own mischance the whiles.”

You have forgotten the saying—­

    ’Who listens not, when true friends counsel well,
    Must fall, as once the foolish Tortoise fell.’

‘I never heard it,’ said the King.  ‘How was that?’ The Goose related—­

THE STORY OF THE TORTOISE AND THE GEESE

“There is a pool in South Behar called the ‘Pool of the Blue Lotus,’ and two Geese had for a long time lived there.  They had a friend in the pool who was a Tortoise, and he was known as ‘Shelly-neck,’ It chanced one evening that the Tortoise overheard some fishermen talking by the water.  ‘We will stop here to-night,’ they said, ’and in the morning we will catch the fish, the tortoises, and such like.’  Extremely alarmed at this, the Tortoise repaired to his friends the Geese, and reported the conversation.

‘What ever am I to do, Gossips?’ he asked.

‘The first thing is to be assured of the danger,’ said the Geese.

‘I am assured,’ exclaimed the Tortoise; ’the first thing is to avoid it:  don’t you know?—­

    ‘Time-not-come’ and ‘Quick-at-peril,’ these two fishes ’scaped the net;
    ‘What-will-be-will-be,’ he perished, by the fishermen beset.’

‘No,’ said the Geese,’ how was it?’ Shelly-neck related:—­

THE STORY OF FATE AND THE THREE FISHES

“It was just such a pool as this, and on the arrival at it of just such men as these fishermen, that three fishes, who had heard their designs, held consultation as to what should be done.

‘I shall go to another water,’ said “Time-not-come,” and away he went.

‘Why should we leave unless obliged?’ asked “Quick-at-peril.”  ’When the thing befalls I shall do the best I can—­

    ’Who deals with bad dilemmas well, is wise. 
    The merchant’s wife, with womanly device,
    Kissed—­and denied the kiss—­under his eyes.’

‘How was that?’ asked the other fish.  Quick-at-peril related:—­

THE STORY OF THE UNABASHED WIFE

“There was a trader in Vikrama-poora, who had a very beautiful wife, and her name was Jewel-bright.  The lady was as unfaithful as she was fair, and had chosen for her last lover one of the household servants.  Ah! womankind!—­

    ’Sex, that tires of being true,
    Base and new is brave to you! 
    Like the jungle-cows ye range,
    Changing food for sake of change.’