The Weight of the Heart
Five tales that ask the king to read the human heart: the gratitude of a dying thief, the restraint of a tempted king, where guilt truly rests and where it does not, and whose love ran the deepest.
Lessons in this chapter
- The Thief Who Wept, Then Laughed — A condemned robber, at the very moment of his death, weeps and then laughs. What do the tears mean, and what the laughter?
- Beautiful Unmadini — A king refuses another man's wife though she is offered to him freely, and dies of the longing. Who stood higher: the king, or the loyal general?
- The Prince and the King's Blind Eye — A prince wins his princess through a chain of silent signs and a heartless deception, and her parents die of grief. The Betaal asks who is guilty, and the answer points at a throne.
- Harisvamin's Misfortunes — A grieving brahman dies of poison that reached his food by pure accident. A kite, a dead snake, a kind couple: who is the murderer? The answer is no one.
- Anangamanjari and Kamalakara — A wife, her beloved, and the husband she scorned all die of love in a single garden. Which of the three loved the most deeply? The answer is the one who was wronged.