Old Kâsim, munching away at the dry bread and pickles which was all his servants could produce, snorted. "'Tis the other way round most times; and see you, sire, I give those Kings your cousins one year, one little year, to hold Herât! Then the Kingdom of their father--God rest his soul since he had gleams of grace and once let one of his God-forgetting sons go before the magistrate--held--despite wine bibbing--for nigh fifty years, will have gone for ever."
"Aye," replied Barbar, thoughtfully. "I have noticed that myself. Some men drink with impunity. I wonder if 'twould hurt me?"
"God forbid! your Majesty!" said old Kâsim with a tremble in his voice. "Shall all our care, mine and the saintly Kwâja who held you as a boy in his guardian care, be wasted? God forbid, say I."
But Babar said nothing; he knew that in his inmost heart he had had for years a great longing just to see what it was like to be drunk! It could scarcely hurt for once, and the land of inebriety could hardly be the arid desert it had been painted for him, or so many folk would not wander in it.
He was always open to reason on all points. Nevertheless he gave out solemnly that he drank no wine, and his cousins, being good hosts, refrained from pressing him to do so.
Badia-zamân, the elder of the three, doubtless thought little of him for the abstinence. To be young, good-looking, able to enjoy yourself in every way and yet not to take the best of Life, seemed to him sheer foolishness; and he showed his estimate in his manner, so that Babar came home from his second interview in a fume of anger.
"This shall not be!" he said hotly. "Kâsim! send proper representations that young as I am, I am of high extraction. Twice have I by force regained my paternal Kingdom, Samarkand. To show want of respect to one who has done so much for his family by repelling the foreign invader is not commendable."
For a marvel the young King was on his dignity, much to old Kâsim's joy. And with good result; for nothing more could have been desired at the next audience which Babar attended with his full retinue. And a fine figure he looked, dressed in the very latest fashion with a gold brocade coat, a flowered undershirt and white silk baggy trousers all lined with gold thread. His hair, too, was scented and curled and his turban tied with a difference. A very different person this from the ragged, out-at-elbow fugitive, or even the stern young soldier in his tarnished coat of mail, fighting for life against overwhelming odds.
He rather liked the change. It was a new experience to ruffle with gilded youth, and he ruffled fairly until his boon companions began to play indecent and scurvy tricks, when he left, disgusted for the time being. But the entertainments were wonderfully elegant. There was every sort of delicacy on the comestible trays, and kababs of fowl and goose; indeed dishes of every sort and kind. The Prince-Kings vied with each other in the refinement of their luxuries, and certainly Badia-zamân's parties deserved to be celebrated; they were so fine, so easy, so unconstrained. On the other hand Mozuffar's entertainments were more amusing, especially when the wine began to take effect. There was a man who danced excessively well; a dance of his own invention.
"Dance or no dance," grumbled old Kâsim, "the Princes thy cousins have taken four months to reach this place. And now news comes that a plundering party of Usbeks is well within touch not more than forty miles off--and they dance! 'Twill be to another tune ere long."