In the Molasses Belt is a city called Sugarcane City In it lived two friends, a weaver and a carpenter. Since they were past masters in their respective crafts, they had earned enough money by their labors so that they kept no account of receipt and expenditure. They wore soft, gaily colored, expensive garments, adorned themselves with flowers and betel-leaves, and diffused odors of camphor, aloes, and musk. They worked nine hours a day, after which they adorned their persons and met for recreation in such places as public squares or temples. They made the rounds of the spots where society gathered—theaters, conversaziones, birthday parties, banquets, and the like—then went home at twilight. And so the time passed.

One day there was a great festival, an occasion when the entire population, wearing the finest ornaments that each could afford, began sauntering through the temples of the gods and other public places. The weaver and the carpenter, like the rest, put on their best things, and in squares and courtyards inspected the faces of people dressed to kill. And they caught a glimpse of a princess seated at the window of a stucco palace. The vicinity of her heart was made lovely by a firm bosom with the curve of early youth. Below the slender waist was the graceful swell of the hips. Her hair was black as a rain-cloud, soft, glossy, with a billowy curl. A golden earring danced below an ear that seemed a hammock where love might swing. Her face had the charm of a new-blown, tender water-lily. Like a dream she took captive the eyes of all; as she sat surrounded by girl friends.

And the weaver, ravished by lavish loveliness, since the love-god with five fierce arrows pierced his heart, concealed his feelings by a supreme effort of resolution, and tottered home, seeing nothing but the princess in the whole horizon. With long-drawn, burning sighs he tumbled on the bed (though it had not been made up), and there he lay. He perceived, he thought of nothing but her, just as he had seen her, and there he lay, reciting poetry:

Virtues with beauty dwell:

So poets sing

This contradiction not

Considering:

That she, so cruel-sweet,

Far, far apart,

Tortures my body still,

Still in my heart.

Or does this explain it?

One heart my darling took;

One pines as if to die;

One throbs with feeling pure:

How many hearts have I?

And yet

If all the world from virtue draws

A blessing and a gain,

Why should all virtue in my maid,

My fawn-eyed maiden, pain?

Each guards his home, they say;

Yet in my heart you stay,

Burning your home alway,

Sweet, heartless one!

That these—her bosom’s youthful pride,

Her curling hair, her sinuous side,

Her blood-red lip, her waist so small—

Should hurt me, is not strange at all:

But that her cheeks so clear, so bright,

Should torture me, is far from right.

Her bosom, like an elephant’s brow,

Swells, saffron-scented. How, ah, how

May I thereon my bosom lay,

When weary love is tired of play,

So, fettered in her arms, to keep

A vigil waking half, half sleep?

If fate has willed

That I should die,

Are there no means

Save that soft eye?

You see my love, though far apart

Before you ever, O my heart!

Should vision cease to satisfy,

Oh, teach your magic to my eye:

For even her presence will distress,

If bought by too great loneliness,

Since none—the merciful are blest—

Of selfishness may stand confessed.

She stole his luster from the moon—

The moon is dull and cold;

The lily’s sheen is in her eyes—

No charge of theft will hold;

The elephant’s majesty she seized—

Naught knows he of her art;

From me the slender maiden took,

Ah, strange! a feeling heart.

In middle air I see my love,

On earth below, in heaven above;

In life’s last hour, on her I call:

She is, like Vishnu, all-in-all.

All mental states, the Buddha said,

Are transient; he was wrong:

My meditations on my love

Are infinitely long.

In such lamentation, his thoughts tossing to and fro, the night dragged drearily away. On the next day at the customary hour, the carpenter, wearing an elegant costume, came as usual to the weaver’s house. There he found the weaver with arms and legs sprawled over the unmade bed, heard his long-drawn, burning sighs, and noticed his pallid cheeks and trickling tears. Finding him in this condition, he said: “My friend, my friend, why are you in such a state today?” But the poor weaver, though questioned repeatedly, was too embarrassed to say a word. At last the carpenter grew weary and dropped into poetry:

No friend is he whose anger

Compels a timid languor,

Nor he whom all must anxiously attend

But when you trust another

As if he were your mother,

He is no mere acquaintance, but a friend.

Then, after examining the weaver’s heart and other members with a hand skilled in detecting symptoms, he said: “Comrade, if my diagnosis is correct, your condition is not the result of fever, but of love.”

Now when his friend voluntarily introduced the subject, the weaver sat up in bed and recited a stanza of poetry:

You find repose in sore disaster

By telling things to clear-eyed master,

To virtuous servant, gentle friend

Or wife who loves you to the end.

Then he related his whole experience from the moment he laid eyes on the princess. And the carpenter, after some reflection, said: “The king belongs to the warrior caste, while you are a business man. Have you no reverence for the holy law?”

But the weaver replied: “The holy law allows a warrior three wives. The girl may be the daughter of a woman of my caste. That may explain my love for her. What says the king in the play?

Surely, she may become a warrior’s bride;

Else, why these longings in an