“For myself I am singularly happy. I suppose even the Emperor can hardly be happier than I am?”
He said this in a tentative way, as though appealing to my personal acquaintanceship with King Edward. But as I could offer no opinion upon the Emperor’s happiness, he went on—
“Every morning I feel like a bird. I wake after my sweet sleep, when the birds are waking too. 1 like to hear them sing, because I know that I am as happy as they can be. I have my troubles of course. I never can induce the gardeners to water my flowers at the right time. They will water them in the evening when the cool night is coming. I tell them they ought to water in the morning, as a protection against the hot days. They promise to obey, and next evening out they go again with their water-pots, as their fathers did before them. There is no science in the East, no progress, no reason.”
For an instant this lamentable truth depressed him, but he revived at the recollection of his own assured happiness.
“I trust entirely to God,” he said. “I leave everything in His hands, and all goes well. He has always helped me very much. Hitherto He has helped me so that I hardly ever have to work. He has never let me work very much, and I trust everything to His care. I think that is why I am so happy, and feel like a bird in the morning after my sweet sleep.”
I suggested that an easy conscience conduces to sleep and happiness, and he agreed it was so.
He then turned to more general subjects, and, like Lord Curzon, he much regretted the Bengali tendency to lying. It was corrupting even the Mohammedans, and nearly all Indian children were brought up in deception, usually to escape punishment or to give pleasure. I remarked that even in Europe these motives sometimes lead to deceit, but he had formed an ideal of English education, such as the Greeks formed of Persian. English boys, he said, were taught to ride, shoot, and tell the truth. It was a fine testimony from a man of education so different from our own.
Of Hindus in general, and of Mohammedans who had lost their faith, he expressed deep distrust, pointing the moral from the fate of a near relation, who, through associating with women and Hindus, was now no better than one of the lost. This grieved me very much, for I had heard that relation highly spoken of in the town, and he had made me various offers of kindness. But the Nawab was inflexible in virtue.
“You must fear God,” he said, becoming for a moment almost grave. “There is no good in praying to God, for He needs nothing that we could give Him in exchange for His gifts. But we know that He is pleased with truth, and we must tell it.”
Then we discussed the Partition, and as I rose to go he exclaimed, “Here in Dacca I have 10,000 men ready to die for me if I raise my little finger. That is how I keep the peace.”