She was almost dead with the fright and the water, in which she had
been kept afloat by her clothes. She was taken to Harding; but the
whole city of Benares was in an uproar, at the rescue of a Brahman's
widow from the funeral pile, for such it had been considered, though
the man had been a year dead. Thousands surrounded his house, and his
court was filled with the principal men of the city, imploring him to
surrender the woman; and among the rest was the poor woman's father,
who declared that he could not support his daughter; and that she
had, therefore, better be burned, as her husband's family would no
longer receive her. The uproar was quite alarming to a young man, who
felt all the responsibility upon himself in such a city as[10]
Benares, with a population of three hundred thousand people,[11] so
prone to popular insurrections, or risings _en masse_ very like them.
He long argued the point of the time that had elapsed, and the
unwillingness of the woman, but in vain; until at last the thought
struck him suddenly, and he said that 'The sacrifice was manifestly
unacceptable to their God--that the sacred river, as such, had
rejected her; she had, without being able to swim, floated down two
miles upon its bosom, in the face of an immense multitude; and it was
clear that she had been rejected.
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