The Palace in the Fort is now but a fraction of what it was in the time of Aurungzebe and his father, but enough remains to enable the imaginative mind to reconstruct the past, especially if one has read my two annalists. One of Bernier's most vivid passages describes the Diwan-i-Am, or Hall of Public Audience, the building to which, after leaving the modern military part of the Fort, one first comes, where the Moguls sat in state during a durbar, and painted and gilded elephants, richly draped, took part in the obeisances. Next comes the Hall of Private Audiences, where the Peacock Throne once stood. It has now vanished, but in its day it was one of the wonders of the world, the tails of the two guardian peacocks being composed of precious stones and the throne itself being of jewelled gold. It was for this that one of Shah Jahan's poets wrote an inscription in which we find such lines as—
By the order of the Emperor the azure of Heaven
was exhausted on its decoration....
The world had become so short of gold on account of
its use in the throne that the purse of the Earth
was empty of treasure....
On a dark night, by the lustre of its rubies and pearls
it can lend stars to a hundred skies....
That was right enough, no doubt, but when our poet went on to say,
As long as a trace remains of existence and space
Shah Jahan shall continue to sit on this throne,
we feel that he was unwise. Such pronouncements can be tested. As it happened, Shah Jahan was destined, very shortly after the poem was written, to be removed into captivity by his son, and the rest of his unhappy life was spent in a prison at Agra. On each end wall of the Hall of Private Audience is the famous couplet,—
If there is a Paradise on the face of the earth,
It is this, Oh! it is this, Oh! it is this.
I think of the garden and palace of Delhi Fort as the loveliest spot in India. Not the most beautiful, not the most impressive; but the loveliest. The Taj Mahal has a greater beauty; the ruined city of Fatehpur-Sikri has a greater dignity; but for the perfection of domestic regality in design and material and workmanship, this marble home and mosque and accompanying garden and terrace could not be excelled. After the Halls of Audience we come to the seraglio and accompanying buildings, where everything is perfect and nothing is on the grand scale. The Pearl Mosque could hardly be smaller; and it is as pure and fresh as a lotus. There is a series of apartments all in white marble (with inlayings of gold and the most delicately pierced marble gratings) through which a stream of water used to run (and it ran again at the Coronation Durbar in 1911, when the Royal Baths were again made to "function") that must be one of the most magical of the works of man. Every inch is charming and distinguished. All these rooms are built along the high wall which in the time of Shah Jahan and his many lady loves was washed by the Jumna. But to-day the river has receded and a broad strip of grass intervenes.