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 228 THE DECLINE AND FALL which he devoured with the voraciousness of hunger. The poor man, whose injury he had avenged, was unable to suppress his astonishment and curiosity ; and the courteous monarch conde- scended to explain the motives of this singular behaviour. " I had reason to suspect that none except one of my sons could dare to perpetrate such an outrage ; and I extinguished the lights, that my justice might be blind and inexorable. My prayer was a thanksgiving on the discovery of the offender ; and so painful was my anxiety that I had passed three days without food since the first moment of your complaint." II. The sultan of Gazna had declared war against the dynasty of the Bowides, the sove- reigns of the western Persia ; he was disarmed by an epistle of the sultana mother, and delayed his invasion till the manhood of her son.^ " During the life of my husband," said the artful re- gent, " I was ever apprehensive of your ambition ; he was a prince and a soldier worthy of your arms. He is now no more ; his sceptre has passed to a woman and a child, and you dare not attack their infancy and weakness. Hoav inglorious would be 3^our conquest, how shameful your defeat ! and yet the event of war is in the hand of the Almighty." Avarice was the only defect that tarnished the illustrious character of Mahmud ; and never has that passion been more richly satisfied. The Orientals exceed the measure of credibility in the account of millions of gold and silver, such as the avidity of man has never accumulated ; in the magnitude of pearls, diamonds, and rubies, such as have never been produced by the workmanship of nature. ^^ Yet the soil of Hindostan is impregnated with precious minerals ; her trade, in every age, has attracted the gold and silver of the world ; and her virgin spoils were rifled by the first of the Mahometan conquerors. His behaviour, in the last days of his life, evinces the vanity of these possessions, so laboriously won, so dangerously held, and so inevitably lost. He surveyed the vast and various chambers of the treasury of Gazna ; burst into tears ; and again closed the doors, without bestowing any portion of the wealth which he could no longer hope to preserve. The following day he reviewed the state of his military force : one ^D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 527. Yet these letters, apophthegms, &c. , are rarely the language of the heart, or the motives of public action. ^o For instance, a ruby of four hundred and fifty miskals (Dow, vol. i. p. 53) or six pounds three ounces : the largest in the treasury of Delhi weighed seventeen miskals (Voyages de Tavernier, partie ii. p. 280). It is true that in the East all coloured stones are called rubies (p. 355), and that Tavernier saw three larger and more precious among the jewels de notre grand roi, le plus puissant et plus mag- nifique de tous les Rois de la terre (p. 376).