Mahâm's face showed whimsical smiles. "Not, my lord, unwillingly. God's earth holds not a more deadly poison to happiness than a discontented woman. So let them go; my lord has plenty of paternal aunts."
There was a certain patience in her tone! But Babar, still protesting, yielded; and set himself solemnly to settle the judicial as well as the executive system of his kingdom. It was about this time that he wrote his famous Essay-on-Jurisprudence which for many long years was to be a work of reference.
His enquiries took him out often into the out districts which, now that spring was advancing were excessively pleasant, abounding in tulips and indeed in all plants of every description. He began again to write poetry; pretty things still touched by profound, if somewhat scholastic, melancholy such as this--
"My heart's a rose full flaming,
Its petals opened wide,
To give her without shaming
Myself and all beside.
Ah me! in vain I lavished
My love on her dear heart,
An envious thorn has ravished
Her hand with deadly smart.
Her life-blood is a-falling
To dim my petals o'er.
Oh, Springtime! cease thy calling,
This rose will bloom no more."
He used to send them to Mahâm, who used to reply in her beautiful nastâlik hand that was always a joy to Babar's simple delight in anything and everything artistic. And he wrote, also, and told her of the thirty-five different kinds of tulips he had gathered, and of the inscriptions he caused to be cut on springs and rocks. And of a certainty when he visited, as he did, the Garden-of-Fidelity at Adinapur, he must have had much to tell her of a small flowerful grave there, where his sad heart was laid.
It was all very pathetic; sweetly pathetic. A noble young King, doing his duty bravely, though glad life was over for him forever.
Even the crystal cup which he carried in his bosom, and from which he drank ever the water of the cool mountain springs, brought him only modified comfort. Perhaps, because, from a sense of duty to himself, he would not allow it to bring more.
And then suddenly the whole wide world changed for him.