When the multitude from the city met the head of our cavalcade, there ensued a tumult of shouts and cries, but I was too far away to distinguish what was occurring. I could see, though, that Zeib Alnissa had risen to her feet in the sovari, and was gesticulating excitedly.
I was deliberating whether I should ride forward or remain where I was, when a fakir forced his way to my side. He was the most hideous specimen of his class I had yet seen; his appearance indicated that he had vowed not to cut his hair nor his finger nails for a decade.
"What do you want?" I called down to him.
"I want you to let me come up there and sit beside you in the sovari," he made answer.
One is obliged to comply with any demand these holy men may see fit to make—especially in face of such a multitude. I leaned over the side of my beast, seized the fakir by the hair, and drew him into the sovari.
"Lucky for you that you granted my request," he said, when he was seated by my side. "You have saved your life by so doing. Know that a revolt broke out in the city during your absence. The conspirators declared that the Begum forfeited the throne by marrying you, and have proclaimed the valiant Singh Rais, the son of her first husband, Sumro Shah, rajah of Sardhana. He has taken possession of the city and bribed the army to support him. He has already executed the subjects who remained loyal to you and the Begum, and the same fate awaits you—if he captures you."
Though loath to believe the fanatic's ill tidings, I was forced to credit my eyes, which at that moment saw rude hands lay hold of my beloved Zeib Alnissa, tear her from the sovari, bind her hands, and, amid the taunts and sneers of the shameless nautchnees, compel her to walk to the gates, while a man, wearing the pearl-decorated hat of a sovereign, climbed to the vacated seat in the sovari.
It was the infamous profligate who, by reason of the honors to which his father had attained, was a prince, but who was, by birth, merely a German nobody, like myself.
He had deposed the Begum as he had threatened, had laid chains on her—the heroic deliverer of her people—and this he had been able to accomplish because he had become an adherent of the religion of Buddha, and because the Begum had become a worshipper of Siva—
"The like of that never could have happened in Europe," interpolated the prince.