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328 We drove rapidly back to the city and through the bazaars, where women in gaily embroidered phulkaris set with looking-glasses seemed to have walked away in those long-favored decorations of British drawing-rooms. We saw the stables, the five hundred horses, the forty elephants tramping and swinging their trunks in idleness "for the honor and glory of the raja," and then made another dash through city streets, with the populace saluting the palace equipage. In one court of the palace, an elephant in state trappings and a body-guard of soldiers waited before the temple where the raja's mother was praying. In the next court, the bearded keeper of the library waited for us in highly impatient mood. He had been waiting for hours, by the diwan's command, and, with much communing in his beard, he produced the books which are Alwar's pride—a beautifully illuminated Koran, a gorgeous Gulistan whose medallions, letters, and borders would excite a Western bibliophile, many Persian books illuminated by the best old Delhi painters,—and showed us one room full of sacred Vedas.

We were taken on to farther courts and through many marble halls to the banquet-hall, where the long dining-table was of solid silver. The water ran gurgling in silver channels down its length, and jeweled birds in gold and silver cages warbled over this precious garden-bed. There was a beautiful white-marble durbar hall with carved balconies and lattices, and a glittering Shish Mahal adjoining it, all a dazzle of mirrors and colored glass. It further overlooked a great tank or lake surrounded by mar-