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Rh clearly blue as sapphire. We forgot the inlaid arches and the tiled facings of the mosque, which is a copy of the mosque at Mecca, and turned only to look again and again at the tiny white tomb shining like a frost creation in the empty stone court, the reality infinitely more satisfactory than even Vereshchagin's painting had led us to expect. In front of this little prettiness the great gate of Victory opens to the plain and the ruined city, a broad staircase leading down to the rubbish-strewn common. We went through the great domed arch, the doors studded with votive nail-heads and horseshoes, and from the foot of the staircase had the intended view of this gate which Fergusson calls "noble beyond that of any portal attached to any mosque in India, perhaps in the whole world." Across the front of this gate Akbar inlaid the famous inscription: "Isa [Jesus], on whom be peace, said: 'The world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no house on it. The world endures but an hour, spend it in devotion.'" There is a great green, oval well, with a parapet and arched chambers surrounding it, close beside the steps and the high, battlemented walls. Despite the keen and wintry air, lean men and boys, shivering in a few flutters of cotton drapery, offered to jump the eighty feet from the battlements into the well. While we demurred, covered with goose-flesh at the mere idea, there was a shout from above, a brown figure shot out into the air, whirling his arms frantically to keep the body upright, and dropped feet foremost into the pool. The green scum closed over him, and before we could recover breath the black head swam