heart of mine.
The distance from Kâbul to Khorasân was over eight hundred miles; so with even every-day marching the journey would have taken some time, and Babar was in no particular hurry. Less so than ever when news came to him with the return of his ambassador, that Sultan Hussain had suddenly died from an apoplectic seizure. At first Babar felt inclined to turn back. His uncle, he knew, had left his kingdom, in unheard of fashion, to his three legitimate sons, in defiance of the old saw about the ten dervishes, and Babar had too much experience to believe that such an arrangement could work satisfactorily. However he had other motives for advancing, and therefore he continued his route, and, passing over the last range of high hills, found himself in the country where the advanced detachments of the Usbek force were already raiding. This in itself was an attraction, bringing as it did a chance of fine fighting. He found his cousins, the new Kings, encamped, ready to meet the advancing foe on the Murghâb river; or rather he found two of them. The third, from private motives of pique had refused to join the confederacy. This appeared to Babar to be inexpressibly mean, when everyone else had united and were sparing no efforts to oppose an enemy so formidable as Shaibâni. He could not understand how any reasonable man could pursue a line of conduct which must after his death, stain his fair fame. Surely everyone with the commonest grace would push forwards his career, so that, even if closed, it would conduct him to renown and glory, since fame is truly a second existence?
These sentiments, however, fine as they were, did not make much mark on the luxurious camp on the banks of the Murghâb. His cousins received Babar fairly well, though their manners required some polishing up by old Kâsim-Beg's inflexible rules of etiquette. Of course, the fact that two of the younger and illegitimate princes did not come out as far as they ought to have done to welcome their Kingly cousin was objectionable; but that might be put down to delay in starting due to an over-night debauch, rather than to intentional slight. But when it came to the State reception in the Audience Tent, Kâsim had to pluck at his young master's girdle and remind him with this jog, that he was to go no further, but to await his eldest cousin's advance. Which he did obediently, knowing that old Kâsim held his King's honour as his own, and was keenly alive to his consequence.
But he, himself, was always forgetting these convenances, where he was concerned. If you really felt affectionate it was a nuisance having to wait, and bow, and scrape.
The State reception, however, went off very well and it was followed by a sort of entertainment at which wine was served in goblets of silver and gold, that were put down by the meat!
Fateful innovation which sent old Kâsim back to his own camp hungry, in the highest of dudgeons.
"Had it been a drinking party, sire," he protested, "'twould have been my own fault for being there. But at an official dinner, 'twas scandalous. No faithful Mussulmân could touch a morsel of food so defiled."
Babar, somewhat regretful at a rather abrupt departure, murmured an excuse to the effect briefly, of "autres tempes, autres moeurs"; whereat Kâsim-Beg, a purist for the old ways, broke out hotly:
"Lo! sire! the Institutions of Ghengis Khân have brought your Highness' family well through much trouble. Sacredly have they observed them in their parties, their courts, their festivals, their entertainments, their down sittings, their risings up, and it would ill become their descendant to flout them."
Babar flushed up; in his heart of hearts, he was not quite such an admirer of the old Turk. "Lo! the Institutes are good enough," he said; "a man may well follow them; yet are they not of Divine authority, so that one be damned for disobeying them. Besides, see you, what hope would there be for the world if folk made no change? If a father has done wrong why should not a son change it to what is right?"