'He is the son of an animal!' said Mahmoud, on one occasion, scornfully; 'he plays fast and loose with your people and his own. According to an old fable, every man bears on his back a wallet in which are deposited his weaknesses and his vices, which, though concealed from his own eyes, are open to the inspection of those of others. Thus we see that the Ameer, if not the tool of Britain, will be the slave of the Russ.'
'Through his duplicity I am a prisoner.'
'Better that than lying yonder in the Bala Hissar,' said Mahmoud, with a cruel leer in his glittering black eyes.
'I am most unfortunate!'
'It was to be, and so it is.'
The doctrine of fatalism meets and covers everything with the Mussulmans, who can thus throw on the Deity the results of their own negligence.
'If it is God's will that a man should die, let him die,' said Mahmoud, sententiously. 'If it be His will that he should live, let him live.'
Colville thought this was uncommonly like the creed of the 'Peculiar People,' in the city of London.
Though somewhat bored by the prayers and piety of Mahmoud Shah, and greatly disgusted by his ferocity, Colville had not much otherwise to complain of during his detention in the fort; and preferred those times when he was left to himself, when the sirdir secluded himself in his zenana, or was absent at the many weighty and evidently important conferences which were being daily held in the palace of Yakoub Khan. 'It is not good that man should be alone,' we are told; so, as Mahmoud the pious had at least four wives in his zenana, he spent much of his precious time there.
The food which he shared with his host was excellent—it could not be said at table, as it was spread on the floor; but, as knives, forks, and spoons are things unknown as yet under the shadow of the Hindoo Kush, it was rather repellant to our fastidious Guardsman to see Mahmoud rend asunder with his fingers a boiled chicken or daintily roasted hill chuckore (or Greek partridge), to hand him a piece with his brown-hued digits, which ever and anon he put half-way down his throat.