He had begun wine-bibbing of deliberate intent. He had told himself that he would only indulge for ten years, until he was forty. Indeed, wanting one year of that age he had drunk more copiously as a sort of send-off to virtue. But virtue had not come. As he sat overlooking the valley where his twelve thousand troops were encamped, the instinct to enhance his keen enjoyment of the beauty he saw found words in an order for a beaker of good Shirâz wine, and an intimation that the Pavilion-of-Spirits was to be prepared, his friends and boon companions warned.
The royal cup-bearer brought a golden goblet filled to the brim, and he quaffed it down like mother's milk; so--the cup still in his hands that hung between his knees--sat drinking in that intoxicating beauty of the splendid world.
For it was still splendid to him; though for twelve years he had seldom gone to bed strictly sober. His face, however, showed no sign of his life, save in a certain premature haggardness of cheek. The eyes were clear as ever, and had gained in their falcon-like keenness by reason of his slight stoop, not from the shoulders, but the neck.
It was sunset. The crests of the surrounding hills showed softly violet against the clear, primrose sky. The girdle of the distant snow peaks were losing the last faint flush of day; the cold icy pallor that was Creeping over them, matched the low, level mist streaks which were beginning to stretch, like a winding sheet, over the darker purple shadow of the valley. A shadow that looked like the sky at night, all set as it was with constellations of camp fires ...
"Slave! Another goblet of wine!"
But, even as he gave the order, a twinge of conscience made him remember the Arabic verse: "The breach of a promise avenges itself on the promise breaker." But it was only a twinge. After all, most of the wine parties had been guileless and innocent. He could scarcely recollect being miserably drunk more than once or twice; and then he had always suffered horribly in the stomach for his sin. And but one or two parties had been disagreeable, as when one Gedâi, being troublesome-drunk had tried to recline on the royal pillow, and had had to be turned out neck and crop by royalty itself; such royalty having invariably a stronger head than the other carousers.
But even that had been rather funny; though not so funny as on the day when, drinking in the open, they had been apprised of the enemy's approach and Dost-Mahomed could not--despite skins full of water--be got on his horse; so Amni, being solemn-drunk, had suggested that rather than leave him in that condition to fall into the enemy's hands it would be better at once to cut off his head and take it away to some place of safety!
The very remembrance brought laughter. Babar tossed off the second beaker of wine, and stood up quoting Nizâmi's verses:
"Oh! bring the musky scented wine,
The key of mirth which must be mine,
The key which opens wide the door
Of rapture rich and varied store,
And o'er the temper casts a spell
Of kindness indescribable."
In those last words lay the secret of Babar's superiority to the debasing influence of his life.