the glory of the Moguls culminated. After him three more kings were worthy of the title "Great," and then by slow degrees the dynasty dwindled down to one Bahâdur Shâh, a feeble old man, who after defying us at Delhi, died miserably in exile.
Akbar was cotemporary of Queen Elizabeth, and his rightful place is among the great company of dreamers--Shakespeare, Raphael, Drake, Galileo, Michelangelo, Cervantes, and half a hundred others--who in the sixteenth century arose (and God alone knows why or whence) to place the whole world, spiritual and temporal, under the sway of imagination for the time.
I have chosen as my period in Akbar's life that time of glorious peace before the abandonment of the City of Victory, Fatehpur Sikri, which he had built to commemorate the birth of his son.
The reason for this abandonment is unknown, though scarcity of water was certainly one of the factors in it.
One thing is clear, the step must have meant much to Akbar; must have involved the giving up of many cherished dreams. And it is equally clear that his whole policy changed from the day he left what was the embodiment of his own personal pride, his own personal outlook on the future. Evidently he felt himself faced by some necessity for supreme choice, and having made it, he kept to the course he had chosen undeviatingly.
I have presumed to find this necessity in the bitter disappointment caused to him by his sons.
This at any rate is history, and with a man of Akbar's temperament it is impossible to overestimate the effect of knowing that his natural heirs were unworthy, incapable indeed, of carrying on his Dream of Empire.
Whether the diamond which plays its part in these pages is the one now called the Koh-i-nur, or whether it was the stone afterward known as the Great Mogul, or whether it was yet a third one, who can say? The history of Oriental gems is often too mysterious even for fiction. But there is a legend that Akbar possessed such a lucky stone, and it is certain that William Leedes remained to cut gems in the Imperial Court when his companions John Newbery and Ralph Fitch left it.
Finally, if competent critics feel inclined to cavil at the extraordinary aloofness of Akbar from his surroundings, I can only bid them remember that he was literally centuries ahead of his time, and assert that in this very aloofness lies the only claim of any soul to be remembered above its fellows.
The two friends whom he chose to be friends--out of the millions of men he governed--fittingly go down with him through those centuries, a trio; Akbar the dreamer, Birbal the doubter, Abulfazl the doer, who between them made of the Great Mogul a king of kings.
A PRINCE OF DREAMS
A PRINCE OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
What know ye of the wearer, ye who know the dress right well? 'Tis the letter-writer only, can the letter's purport tell.
--Sa'adi.
"Hush! The King listens!"
The sudden sonorous voice of the court-usher echoed over the crowd and there was instant silence.
The multitude sank, seated on the ground where it had been standing, and so disclosed to view the rose-red palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, the City of Victory, rising from the rose-set gardens where the silvery fountains sprang from the rose-red earth into the deep blue of the sky.
Akbar the King showed also, seated on a low, marble, cushion-covered pedestal beneath a group of palms.
He was a man between the forties and the fifties with no trace of the passing years in form or feature, save in the transverse lines of thought upon his forehead. For the rest, his handsome aquiline face with its dreamy yet fireful eyes and firm mouth, held just the promise of contradiction which is often the attribute of genius.
So, as he sate listening, a woman sang.
She stood tall, supple, looking in the intensity of her crimson-scarlet dress, like a pomegranate blossom, almost like a blood-stain amongst the white robes of her fellow musicians. The face of one of these, fine, careworn, stood out clear-cut as a cameo against the glowing colour of her drapery, and the arched bow of his rebeck swayed rhythmic ally as the high fretful notes followed the trilling turns of her voice:
Gladness is Gain, because Annoy has fled
Sadness is Pain, because some Joy is dead
Light wins its Halo from the Gloom of night
Night spins its Shadow at the Loom of light.
The Twain are one, the One is twain
Naught lives alone in joy or pain
Except the King! Akbar the King is One!
Birth sends us Death, and flings us back to Earth
Earth lends us Breath, and brings us fresh to Birth
Love gives delight----
"Hush! The King wearies!"
Once again the sonorous voice of the court-usher following a faint uplift of the King's finger brought instant obedience. The singer was silent, the crowd remained expectant, while the hot afternoon sun blazed down on all things save the King, sheltered by the royal baldequin.
He raised his keen yet dreamy eyes and looked out almost wistfully to the far blue horizon of India, which from this rocky red ridge whereon he had built his City of Victory showed distant, unreal, a mere shadow on the inconceivable depth of the blue beyond.
Jalâl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar, Great Mogul, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith, Head of Kingdoms Spiritual and Temporal! Aye, he thought, he was all that so far as the Shadow went. But in the Light? What of the Light beyond, wherein Someone--Something--sate enthroned, King-of-Kings, Lord-of-Lords? What was he there?
He rose suddenly, and the crowd rising also swept back from his path tumultuously, as the waters of the Red Sea swept back from the staff of Moses, to leave him free, unfettered.
There was no lack of power about him anyhow! He stepped forward, centring his world with the swing of an athlete--a swing which made the bearers of the royal baldequin jostle almost to a trot in their efforts to keep the Sacred Personality duly shaded; and then he paused to look thoughtfully into a pool that was fretted into ceaseless rippling laughter by the fine misty spray which was all that fell back from the clear, strong, skyward leap of the water in the central fountain. Was that typical of all men's efforts, he wondered? A skyward leap impelled by individual strength; and then dispersion? When he died--and death came early to his race--what then?
He stood absorbed while
