"Sobhan-ullah!" assented the Makhdûm-ul'-mulk, who had been the highest religious authority in the land until the King, with one sweep of his pen, had made himself the Head of the Church. A direful offence to the orthodox who refused assent to Akbar's reasoning that since there was but one law, the law of God, there could be but one authority; therefore the intervention of a priesthood between the people and God's vice-regent on earth was unnecessary, impolitic.
An old man, white-bearded, high-featured, murmured to himself, "Yet is he King indeed," then fell hurriedly to the telling of his beads; but Ghiâss Beg, the Lord High Treasurer--a stout, good-humoured looking man, whose fat paunch stood evidence for his love of good living--shook his head and sighed.
"It cometh of abstinence, see you," he mourned. "When the stomach is empty wind rises to the head. And, were it not for that damned sense of duty which leaveth the King neither by day nor by night, Akbar would give up food and sleep altogether. So far hath he wandered from the Sure Pivot of Life that the very question of dinner ariseth not in his mind; he eats but once a day, and leaveth off unsatisfied, nor is there even any fixed hour for this food. Sure! 'tis the life of a very dog."
"So he keep it, and his dogs, and his uncircumcised friends to himself," muttered a sour-visaged elder, "I quarrel not with his starvations. Belike they may bring the Heir-Apparent to his rights sooner, and that would be a glad day for Islâm."
The old man with the white beard who was telling his beads murmured once more under his breath: "Yet is he King indeed," and went on with his prayers still more hurriedly.
"Lo! mullah jee!" yawned another sour-visaged one, "Prince Salîm will be in the idolaters' toils ere then. With a Râjpût to wife there is small hope for a Ruler of the Faith."
In the hot sunshine where they sate whispering like sleepy snakes, ready, yet too lazy, to strike, a leisurely groan ran round the whole assembly. That the first wife--practically the only real wife--of the Heir-Apparent should be a Hindu was simply an outrage. It was bad enough that the King himself should have taken the Râjpût daughters and sisters of his conquered foes into his harem, in order--heaven save the mark!--to cement friendship between the races; but he, at least, had been first married in orthodox fashion to a daughter of Islâm. Could he not do even so much for his son?
Ghiâss Beg heaved another fat sigh and his face took on obstinacy.
"True," he assented, "and 'tis not that as fair a bride could not be found----"
"In the House of the Lord High Treasurer," interrupted a sneering voice. It came from Mirza Ibrahîm, who, at that moment, followed at a little distance by a posse of courtiers and others, came from the cloisters full upon the half-drowsy group of malcontents.