"With his Majesty up stairs, I think," he replied, still looking anxiously in one direction, as though watching for her.
This was an unusual circumstance for my sad, lonely friend, and I returned home without my lesson for that day.
Next morning, passing the house again, I saw the lad sitting in the same attitude at the window, his eyes bent in the same direction, only more wistful and weary than before. On questioning him, I found his mother had not yet returned. At the pavilion I was met by the Lady Tâlâp, who, seizing my hand, said, "Hidden-Perfume is in trouble."
"What is the matter?" I inquired.
"She is in prison," she whispered, drawing me closely to her. "She is not prudent, you know,—like you and me," in a tone which expressed both triumph and fear.
"Can I see her?" I asked.
"Yes, yes! if you bribe the jailers. But don't give them more than a tical each. They'll demand two; give them only one."
In the pavilion, which served as a private chapel for the ladies of the harem, priests were reading prayers and reciting homilies from that sacred book of Buddha called Sâsânâh Thai, "The Religion of the Free"; while the ladies sat on velvet cushions with their hands folded, a vase of flowers in front of each, and a pair of odoriferous candles, lighted. Prayers are held daily in this place, and three times a day during the Buddhist Lent. The priests are escorted to the pavilion by Amazons, and two warriors, armed with swords and clubs, remain on guard till the service is ended. The latter, who are eunuchs, also attend the priests when they enter the palace, in the afternoon, to sprinkle the inmates with consecrated water.
Leaving the priests reciting and chanting, and the rapt worshippers bowing, I passed a young mother with a sleeping babe, some slave-girls playing at sabâh [Footnote: Marbles, played with the knee instead of the fingers.] on the stone pavement, and two princesses borne in the arms of their slaves, though almost women grown, on my way to the palace prison.
If it ever should be the reader's fortune, good or ill, to visit a Siamese dungeon, whether allotted to prince or peasant, his attention will be first attracted to the rude designs on the rough stone walls (otherwise decorated only with moss and fungi and loathsome reptiles) of some nightmared painter, who has exhausted his dyspeptic fancy in portraying hideous personifications of Hunger, Terror, Old Age, Despair, Disease, and Death, tormented by furies and avengers, with hair of snakes and whips of scorpions,—all beyond expression devilish. Floor it has none, nor ceiling, for, with the Meinam so near, neither boards nor plaster can keep out the ooze. Underfoot, a few planks, loosely laid, are already as soft as the mud they are meant to cover; the damp has rotted them through and through. Overhead, the roof is black, but not with smoke; for here, where the close steam of the soggy earth and the reeking walls is almost intolerable, no fire is needed in the coldest season. The cell is lighted by one small window, so heavily grated on the outer side as effectually to bar the ingress of fresh air. A pair of wooden trestles, supporting rough boards, form a makeshift for a bedstead, and a mat (which may be clean or dirty, the ticals of the prisoner must settle that) is all the bed.