During all this time, I saw my bride only when she was seated on a throne, on an elephant, or in a palanquin. The opportunities for an exchange of words were rare. On the one hundred and tenth day we set out on our return home. On the morning of that day, Zeib Alnissa sent me a letter in which she gave me the welcome news that what might be called our "St. Joseph's marriage" would soon come to a conclusion. The carrier dove had returned from Holland with the longed-for consent from my first wife.
Before leaving our capital, we had arranged for a fitting reception to greet our return. When our cavalcade should approach the city gates, all the most distinguished residents, the raos, the singhs, the sages, bonzes and holy men were to meet us at the head of a gorgeous pageant and greet me as "Rajah," to which title our tour would have given me the right.
Then would follow a splendid feast, that would conclude with the "utterpan" ceremony, in which every guest receives from the rajah's own hands a handkerchief perfumed with rose-water.
The rajah receives the utterpan from his wife, of whom he may demand that the rose-water perfuming be performed in the zenana.
The zenana is that portion of the palace which only the rajah and his wives may enter.
I am ashamed to confess it, honorable gentlemen of the court, but I was so rejoiced, so proud of my success, my extraordinary good fortune filled my soul to such a degree, that I never once thought to offer a prayer to the god Siva, who had bestowed all the good gifts on me, or to Jehovah, who could take them all from me.
The fakir, who, in his religious enthusiasm, carries on his head a pot of earth until the orange seed planted in it sprouts, grows to a tree, blooms and bears fruit; who binds himself to a post, that he may sleep standing so as not to lose his balance and drop the pot from his head—that fakir does not suffer half as much as did I those one hundred and ten days and nights, when I was forced to refrain from saying to the most beautiful of women: "O, thou my sweetest one!"
But the last day of such restraint and torture was at hand. Before us lay the capital; the gilded roofs of its palaces gleamed through the humid atmosphere.
Already I could see rising from the market-place the "baoli," under which the three-legged stone cow waited (as all believers know) for the hour of midnight to hobble to her pasture outside the walls. Already I saw the multitude in gala attire press forth from the elaborately carved gates, on horses, on camels, on foot—a mingling of gold, gems, beauty, flowers, with rags, filth and unsightly scars.
Zeib Alnissa, as usual, rode at the head of the cavalcade, and I at the end, separated from her by a cannon shot range.