CHAPTER XIX
BETWIXT CUP AND LIP
Now it may indeed seem that all our little Heir-to-Empire's troubles were over; but there is still somewhat to tell of our young hero. To begin with, Queen Humeeda was a wise woman, and she saw that it was not good for the little lad to be always at play. She knew that as a King's son in the East, he would have small time after he was ten for schooling, and as he was now close on four that did not leave many years for teaching.
So a tutor was found for him; but it is to be feared that he was by no means an industrious scholar. Indeed, we hear of such dreadful things as playing truant, so that when a day was fixed for an examination by learned men as to how the Heir-to-Empire was getting on with his studies, "at the master moment it was found that the scholar, having attired himself for sport, had disappeared!" Then his first tutor was dismissed because he encouraged his pupil in pigeon flying, and we read of his applying his thoughts more to dog-fancying and Arab horses than to his books. Still he did learn one thing, and a good thing, too.
The day he was four years and four days old he was taught, as all little Mohammedans are taught, to understand what he was, what the world about him was, and to recognise that neither he himself, nor the world he lived in were the Beginning and the End of all things. It was a stately ceremonial, not beautiful, and lavish, and expensive like the Festival of the Mystic Palace, but one which left its mark for always on the mind of the child.
Despite his dislike to books as the only way of learning to be wise, he never forgot the day in the Great Mosque, when, before all his relations, he had to stand up dressed in his simple every day clothes and take the Holy Book from the hands of the high priest. And he never forgot the high priest's words:
"Read in the Name of Him who hath made all things in Heaven and earth, and Who hath given men power to be wise."
"Bismillah!—Irruhman-nirruheem!" he had answered as in duty bound, which means, "Thanks be to Him who is merciful in this world and merciful in the next world."
In this way young Prince Akbar learned that every man has power to be wise, and that the great mystery of birth and death is a merciful mystery.