--Nizami.
Four years had passed away and the Dream in Red Sandstone still waited for the Dreamer: waited, as it still waits, deserted but not ruined, the Great Arch of Victory remaining as Birbal had prophesied, that which no man having once seen, can ever forget.
But Birbal himself had passed into the unknown; almost into the forgotten save for his master's undying affection which, even after two years, still scanned the earthly horizon eagerly looking for news, at any rate, of his lost friend; since Birbal's actual death is one of those things of which neither past or present hold any knowledge. He disappeared in the mountains of Swât whither he had gone in the vain effort to translate one of Akbar's dreams into terms of reality.
For the Great Mogul, Emperor of India, had dreams of conquest, not by sword, not even by religion, as his great forerunner the Emperor Asoka had had in the years before Christ--but by common sense; that is the voluntary submission of the individual to a collective policy which makes for peace and prosperity to the mass of the people.
Deprived of latter-day delusions, modern foolishnesses, Akbar's dream was Socialism. Not the Socialism which proclaims the right of the individual, which presses that home against all other considerations, but the Socialism which sweeps all things, individual poverty as well as individual wealth into the Great Mill of God for the good of the race; which holds personal comfort unworthy of consideration.
It was not, perhaps, a policy suited to the most turbulent tribes upon the Indian Frontier. Still Kabul had been annexed almost without a blow, Kashmir brought into the Imperial net by a peaceful demonstration, and, but for Sinde, the Imperial armies would scarcely have struck a blow during these years of Imperial aggrandisement.
Anyhow, the experiment, one after Akbar's own heart, was tried; and Birbal went with the forces as a counterpoise to the old Commander in Chief (he was the Wellington of Akbar's reign) and his more antiquated methods of suasion. They drew lots, those two friends of the King, Abulfazl and Birbal, which should take the onerous post; and the lot fell on Birbal. It is said that the King hesitated to let him go; but behind friendship lay Kingship.
So he went, and disputes soon arising between the policy of pike and cannonade, as against a mere display of force, Birbal, left in the lurch, disappeared for ever with fifteen hundred picked men amid the peaks and passes of the Alai Mountains.
It had been a great blow to Akbar; he had, indeed, refused to believe in his friend's death, and still looked for him to return--even if from the Other Side--in obedience to his promise.
But now, this 10th of May, 1590, he was pausing a little below the top of the Pir Panjal Pass on the way to Kashmir, awaiting the arrival of William Leedes, the English jeweller, who all these years had been engaged in cutting the Great Diamond of India.