A Prince of Dreamers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

--Hafiz.

The Hall of Labour lay deserted as if the artificers who worked in its surrounding arcades had taken profit by the wisdom of Hafiz which came trilling from the furthermost, sun-saturated end of the long parallelogram of roof in which Akbar's especial artificers laboured at especial tasks.

It was a quaint place this Hall or rather Roof of Labour, for it was set high between the higher palaces which rose around it on three sides. The fourth was arcaded as were the others, but in dummy fashion, that is to say with the shallow archways filled in with brick work--and gave on the wide plains of India, which were, however, invisible because of the height of the wall. Most things, indeed of the outside world were invisible from the Hall of Labour; you had to go through the sentry-guarded door opposite the hidden plains before you could get rid of a certain sense of imprisonment, of absorption in duty. The artificers in the cell-like workshops on the left hand of the doorway, were, however, better off in this case than those on the right, since the superstructure above these was but cell wide, and so from their farther ends, high, unattainable windows, partially bricked up, let in a cross light on lathes and crucibles, paint-brushes, and even inkpots; for in one of them near the door Budaoni, the historian, used to sit most days engaged on his uncongenial task of translating the Hindu scriptures, and glaring at another writer over the way who was copying the translation of the Gospels for which Akbar had paid the Jesuits a round sum of money. Money not quite honestly earned, since the text was deftly doctored to suit Jesuit dogma! But even if this had been known it would have mattered little to the jealousies of the rival writers.

Farther down this left hand side worked a chemist employed in testing atomic weights, an engraver busy over a ruby intaglio, an experimentalist attempting to prove the properties of quicksilver in the transmutation of metals, a worker in gold on crystal, and so on; till at the end came an empty arcade with shut door, then William Leedes's workshop, and on the other side the studio of Diswunt the crippled painter. He was especially favoured, for in addition to the high window which, like those in the other cells gave on the Court of Dreams--on the opposite side of which stood the King's Sleeping Palace--he had a corbeilled balcony overlooking the Indian plain; at least so much of it as could be seen by reason of the towering Arch of Victory which thrust itself skyward from its great plinth of steps. Looking downward, one could see them receding in sharp angles almost to the bottom of the rocky ridge. No place here, therefore, for escape or entry, so Diswunt was allowed the luxury of light, even when his great wide door was shut. He kept it so constantly; for he was morose by birth, embittered by the accident of it.

And yet the idle rhymes of Hafiz came to his lips as he sate irresolute, thinking of the paradise one woman had promised him if he did something--a mere trifle!--for her; of the hell with which another woman had threatened him should he fail to do the same thing. It was too bad to have duty and pleasure on the same side; and against them--what? Only loyalty to the man who seeing him--then a mere beast of burden--as he paused in the bazaar to make, with a bit of the charcoal he was carrying and a white-washed wall, a spirited sketch of a dog gnawing a bone, had sent him for training to the Court School of Painting. That, after all, had been but a sorry action! Diswunt looked distastefully at his work--a portrait of Akbar small enough to go into a ring--and his whole soul went out to charcoal and a white wall.

For the misshapen lad whose face had the brilliant, bizarre beauty of strongly marked feature which so often goes with physical deformity, was without doubt part of the sixteenth century crop of genius, of which so much has remained to the world, so much more has passed out of it, unwitting even of itself.

His eyes, as he sate listlessly, were dull with the hemp he drank habitually to deaden the depth of his discontent.

For Akbar had not been able to uphold, against the whole artistic verdict of his court, his own opinion that the "portrayal of real life gave special facilities for true education since every touch that went toward the likeness of reality must make the painter feel his own impotence to bestow life, and so lead him to a right appreciation of the immeasurable dignity of the Creator."

They had been brave words, but they had ended in stipplings and blobs of white paint to imitate pearls!

Yet there were some who thought as he, Diswunt the King's crippled painter thought. He shivered as he remembered the day but a week ago, when the infidel jeweller next door, with whom he had scraped up an acquaintance, had replied to a question he had asked in the lingua franca of mixed Portuguese and Arabic which served as court jargon for strangers.