The east was all flushed with rose-leaf clouds when Akbar awoke and smiled to find Birbal wrapped in his shawl watching him with curious, doubtful eyes.
Would the King remember? That was the question.
"Lo! friend," he said affectionately. "So may I wake in Paradise after a dreamless sleep and find thee there."
[CHAPTER VI]
The current of a deed will work its way
Through the wide world and cannot be resisted,
'Twas seasonably done--the seed is sown
And in due time will bear the fruit of discord.
--Kalidasa.
The wide mosque lay empty save for a group of long-bearded doctors of the law, who, lingering after service was over, discussed as ever the unfailing topic of the King's innovations. Such purposeless innovations too! Leading to nothing, to absolute nescience; for what else was all this talk of freedom, of equality, of universal brotherhood? Were not kings, kings, and nobles, nobles, since the very beginning?
These reverend seigneurs surcharged with pride of race, the pride of the conqueror, fiercely fanatical in faith, felt resentfully that in religion, in manners, in morals, Akbar, their King, stood absolutely aloof from them.
Yet they, in their turn, stood as absolutely aloof from the real heart of India which beat placidly in the simple lives of the husbandmen toiling in the ample fields which, seen through the great Arch of Victory receded into a dim blue distance that lost itself in a dim blue sky. So each, the conqueror, the conquered, went on his way, while a man dreamt of blending the two into one.
"Yes! it is true," murmured Budaoni the historian regretfully; "from his earliest childhood his Majesty hath collected everything in all religions that is worth remembering, with a talent of selection peculiar to him, and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every principle of our Faith."