The Faithless Wife and the Ungrateful Blind Man— p. 215.

Two very bad characters, and the less my readers have to do with such, the better for their own peace of mind, I trow!— There is a tale in the Kathá Sarit Ságara of a woman who cruelly abandoned her helpless husband in the jangal, and went off with a lusty young fellow, but I am unable to say in which chapter of that most valuable and entertaining collection it occurs, though I made a special search for it.

As a set-off to the faithless wife of the blind man—who after­wards proves to be himself an arrant scoundrel—read the touching address of Damayanti to her husband the ruined Rájá Nala, when he proposes in the jangal that she should return to her parents and leave him to his fate: “O king, thinking of thy purpose, my heart trembleth, and all my limbs become faint. How can I go, leaving thee in the lone woods, despoiled of thy kingdom and deprived of thy wealth, thyself without a garment on, and worn with hunger and toil? When, in the deep woods, fatigued and afflicted with hunger, thou thinkest of thy former bliss, I will, O great monarch, soothe thy weariness. In every sorrow, there is no medicine equal unto the wife, say the physicians. It is the truth, O Nala, that I speak unto thee!”*

A story somewhat resembling the incident of the blind man and the honest Setti will be found in the notes on the ROSE OF BAKAWALI, under the heading of ‘The Bráhman and the Lion.’