Why! Even if their Emperors or chief nobility had occasion for a light, they had to send for dirty, filthy men called "Lighters," who held an iron tripod--smelling horribly and dripping rancid oil--close under their masters' noses!
Pah! It was disgusting!
For a wonder Babar was in a real evil temper. He could scarcely remember having felt so irritable before; except that once, when he had been trying to mount a fidgety Biluch mare and had struck her in his impatience with his half-closed fist and had thereby dislocated his thumb, which had troubled him for months; a just punishment for losing his temper with a dumb animal which knew no better.
Besides, that time, he had been half-drunk. But now?...
He felt inclined to cry. A state of mind in which this man of the West and North has the sympathy of thousands upon thousands of others; since there is scarce an Anglo-Indian who has not felt the same on hot, breathless May mornings when the dull eyes, seeking for some object on which to rest, find none, save a wide waste of sand, an indeterminate kikar tree, and an aggressive crow bent on showing you that he is as black inside as he is outside.
"The Most-Clement will forget the unloveliness when he stands once more in the Garden-of-Fidelity," remarked Kwâjah-Kilân with intent; and Babar actually scowled at him. Yet he had not the heart to say in so many words that he had no intention of returning to that Garden-of-Fidelity. The very thought of its beauty made him feel sick; but there was duty as well as beauty to be considered.
And here again he has the sympathy of how many thousand western workers in Hindustân? In truth Babar should be the patron saint of the Indian Services!
But all things were against him that year. The very heat was uncommonly oppressive; men dropped down as if they had been affected by the simoon wind, and died upon the spot. Then there was always dislike and hostility between the new comers and the people, and it was difficult to find grain, or provender. The roads, too, became impassable, and the villagers, out of hatred and spite, took to thieving and robbery. Yet in such a furnace how was it possible to send out proper protection to the districts?
Still Babar set his teeth and stuck to the saddle.
"What! thou also?" he said reproachfully to Kwâjah-Kilân when in the privacy of the small Audience-Chamber, the latter urged the wisdom of doing as all the past conquerors of India had done; that is leaving so soon as the treasures had been divided. "And I counted thee my best friend."