“Nay, had we been united while I was only heir-apparent to the throne to which I have been just elevated, I might have soon come to that inheritance to which your father’s violence has prematurely raised me.”
“But then you would have ascended the musnud with honour; now, you have ascended it with disgrace.”
“I am ready to relinquish all honours for you, Agha.”
“That may not be; you have pushed the stone from the precipice, and, in spite of all mortal endeavours, it will roll to the bottom. Farewell, and may your reign be happy.”
One day, a singular-looking devotee was seen to cast himself upon the ground without the walls of the capital, and to pronounce, in a tone of solemn vaticination, woe to the kingdom of the Deccan. In proof of his inspiration, the fanatic declared himself ready to fast forty days on the very spot where he then lay. He was old and withered to a mere skeleton; his age was said to exceed a hundred years; for the oldest inhabitants remembered him but as a very aged man. His hair still hung over his shoulders so copiously as to cover them like a mantle; but it was so impregnated with filth that its colour was not to be ascertained. He had no beard, save a few straggling hairs scattered over his chin like stunted bushes upon the desert rock. His ears were so long that they nearly reached his shoulders, which rose towards them with physical sympathy, as if to relieve the head from their weight. His gums were toothless, and so blackened by opium and the smoke of tobacco, that as his lips parted—and when they did, they seemed to shrink from a renewed contact, and to seek severally protection from the nose and chin—the whole mouth presented a feature of sickening deformity. Every rib in the old man’s body was as traceable as the lines which mark the latitude and longitude upon a chart. The very sinews had wasted into thin, rigid cords, without either flexibility or tension.
The approach of this sainted object to the city was a circumstance of much uneasiness to those who had acted so conspicuous a part in the recent change of government. The veneration in which he was held made them fear the effect of his crazy predictions upon the excited multitude.
Lallcheen hoped the old man would confirm his declarations by a fast of forty days; flattering himself that, by exposing to the people the delusions by which the object of their veneration evidently juggled them, he should be able to show that the fanatic was a worthless impostor. A tent was consequently ordered to be pitched over the prostrate devotee, and a number of men appointed to watch him day and night, in order to see that no human nourishment passed his lips. Two persons were constantly by his side.
Lallcheen visited him. As the traitor appeared before him, the seer raised his head; his eye instantly kindled as if with a divine afflatus, and he said, waving his arm solemnly:
“The blood of the murdered shall give life to the avenger! When slaves rebel, and grasp the thunderbolt of power, they eventually hurl it against their own heads. The web of fate is spun by different threads, but the woof of thine is black. Prepare, Lallcheen, for the explosion which thy own ambitious hand has kindled. The match is already at the train; thou wilt soon hear and feel the desolating concussion! Woe to the destroyer!”
The slave trembled, in spite of his conviction that the saint was crazed. He dreaded the influence of his wild sallies of prophecy. Day after day passed, and neither food nor water was seen to pass the diviner’s lips. The guards were astonished, and beheld him with sacred awe. They vowed they never slept: they were constantly changed, but precisely the same result followed—the inspired man was seen to taste nothing. He sat upon the cold ground, without a rag to cover him, in an apparent state of devout abstraction, never uttering a word; except now and then, when he poured out terrible denunciations of wrath against those who had blinded the late king and murdered his nobles.