[_Cries repeated_] The
screams of those water-birds but increase our melancholy.
ATTENDANT. Let your Majesty cease this sorrow, and have
some regard to your sacred [3] person.
EMPEROR. My sorrows are beyond control. Cease to upbraid
this excess of feeling, since ye are all subject to the same. Yon
doleful cry is not the note of the swallow on the carved rafters,
nor the song of the variegated bird upon the blossoming tree. The
princess has abandoned her home! Know ye in what place she grieves,
listening like me to the screams of the wild bird?
_Enter President_.
PRESIDENT. This day after the close of the morning council,
a foreign envoy appeared, bringing with him the fettered traitor
Maouyenshow. He announces that the renegade, by deserting his
allegiance, led to the breach of truce, and occasioned all these
calamities. The princess is no more! and the K'han wishes for peace
and friendship between the two nations. The envoy attends, with
reverence, your imperial decision.
EMPEROR. Then strike off the traitor's head, and be it presented
as an offering to the shade of the princess! Let a fit banquet be
got ready for the envoy, preparatory to his return. _[Recites these
verses_.
At the fall of the leaf, when the wild-fowl's cry was heard
in the recesses of the palace.
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