"Mahâm! My son!--my son!" was all that he could say when urgent summons brought him to a smiling mother and a new-born infant.
"He is like thee," she said, a tremor in her calm voice.
"God forbid!" interrupted the father hastily. "God send he be like thee--the best woman in the world--the best--the very best!"
Never were such rejoicings. The paternal aunts, who of late months had been let into the secret, were almost crazy with delight. And wherefore not? When a King has lived to be six-and-twenty without a son; when despite three marriages only two children have been borne to him, miserable little daughters, one dead, one but a few months old, it is time to be festive over a proper birth. And was there ever such a baby? So tall, so strong, so handsome and so altogether satisfactory. No wonder his father, who ever had a pretty wit, called him Humâyon. That might portend the phœnix, the bird of good omen, besides half-a-dozen other side meanings, each charming in its way.
But Babar, leaning over the happy mother said softly, "He shall be my protection in the future. Lo! Mahâm! I have put myself outside myself as they say in the child-stories of our youth. Who was't who put his life safe in a gold box? Well! my life is hid in my son's. So there, my wife, have a care of us both--for, verily in some ways, Mahâm, I need looking after like an infant."
The feast of nativity was a very splendid feast. Everyone who was Big, and everyone who was Not, brought their offerings. Bags on bags of silver money were piled up, until everyone was forced to confess that never before had they seen so much white money in one place.
And the entertainments! There were fireworks and marionettes and conjuring tricks. In fact a perfect fair for a whole week in the Great Four-square-Garden on the hill.
But the greatest amusement of all was one to which the Palace Ladies invited a select audience.
It was organised by the Fair Princess who had a genius that way, and its piece de resistance was a huge roc-egg brought in by fairies, which, cracking in most realistic fashion, disclosed the most magnificent phœnix that ever was seen, with feathers of every hue and plumes galore (it had, of course, a gold crown on its head) which monstrous bird being removed, like a tea cosy, appeared no less a personage than
"The Heir Apparent"
"Humâyon."