Lallcheen, perceiving that he had now gone too far to retreat, removed the wounded monarch to another apartment, and immediately despatched a messenger to the nobles who had that night been his guests, desiring in the king’s name that they would immediately return. The message was delivered to each noble separately, so that one by one they reached the slave’s residence. As the first who arrived entered the chamber where he had so lately partaken of Lallcheen’s hospitality, he was put to death by two eunuchs, who flung a noose over his head and strangled him. Thus the whole of them were destroyed to the number of twenty-four, and their bodies cast forth a prey to jackals.
On the morrow, when Agha returned to her home, she was shocked beyond expression at the sanguinary revenge which her father had taken. Her heart was chilled: she felt that she never could again look upon her parent with respect, and the fond yearnings of her bosom grew cold. She reproached him with his cruelty, but he silenced her with a stern rebuke. The disaffected Omrahs thronged to his house, prepared to assist him in his future views with respect to the government. The daring act of blinding the king and slaying his nobles, had produced a general panic. The people looked on in silent amazement; when Lallcheen, thinking it was high time to act definitively, placed Shums-ood-Deen, the deposed king’s brother, upon the throne, and sent the latter in confinement to the fortress of Sagur.
CHAPTER III.
The conduct of Lallcheen excited great indignation: but the king had so lately given way to intemperance and the indulgence of his grosser passions, that those hopes entertained of him at his accession to the throne had subsided. He had raised many enemies by his excesses. The traitor, moreover, was supported by the queen-mother, of whom her younger son, Shums-ood-Deen, had ever been the favourite. He was extremely popular, too, among many of the Omrahs; for he was a generous youth, possessing many virtues, and no flagrant vices.
The moment his brother was deposed, Lallcheen, assisted by the influence of the queen-mother, placed Shums-ood-Deen upon the musnud. The young monarch was now eager to make Agha his queen; but she, shocked at what had passed, could not be prevailed upon, for the moment, to consent. She would not see her father, and to the king’s urgent entreaties to make him happy, she replied:—
“Alas! the auspices under which you reign are evil. I fear that prosperity can never track the steps of a prince whose path to the throne has been stained with blood.”
“My noble Agha, we must bow to the crisis that has suddenly come upon us. I mourn the event which has elevated me to the highest of human dignities as much as you can do, and detest the agents who have placed me upon the musnud, with hands dyed in my brother’s blood. But as he has been disabled, it was necessary that a sovereign should be found; and I am the next of kin. You know it to be against the canons of our constitution that a blind prince should reign. Were I to refuse to hold the sceptre, I should be looked upon with suspicion, and my life would be in perpetual peril.”
“Prince, I shrink from becoming the wife of a man who has obtained his dignities by violence. I acquit you of all participation in the crime which has so suddenly made you a monarch, but will never consent to share your sullied honours. I foresee only misery from my parent’s ambition. Though the deposed king would have heaped upon me the heaviest wrongs which can weigh down the spirit of a virtuous woman, still I would have left him to the punishment which invariably awaits the wicked, administered by a higher arbiter of human dereliction than man.”
“Agha!” cried the Prince, passionately, “have I deserved to forfeit your love?”
“Not my love, Prince; but my consent to be your bride. You must now form higher views; there is an insuperable bar between us.”