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82 interested in his visitor that on dismissing him at the close of the audience he commanded that he should be in daily attendance at his Court.

Hawkins' position was now assured. He advanced from honour to honour with a rapidity only possible in an Oriental court. At length some weeks after the arrival of the mission Jehangir made him a definite proposal with a view of securing his services permanently. The imperial offer was a licence for a factory at Surat for the Company, and for Hawkins personally an allowance of £3,200 a year, with the command of 400 horse. The suggestion was too tempting to be put aside by one in the position of Hawkins. As he quaintly put it to the Company, while another would easily take the place tentatively assigned to him at Bantam he would be so situated that "I should feather my nest and doe you service." He therefore closed with the proposal, and from the rôle of envoy made an easy transition to that of personal attendant on the Emperor. In his new office he was intimately associated with Jehangir not only in the ceremonial duties of the daily durbar, where he occupied a position among the nobles in the little railed enclosure reserved for them, but in the nightly wassails in the inner recesses of the palace, at which the imperial debauchee unbent in extraordinary fashion.

It was probably at one of these symposiums that Jehangir took it into his head to confer upon Hawkins a wife. The story, as told by the erstwhile envoy in his record of his life at Agra is that the Emperor one day was "very earnest" with him "to take a white maiden out of his palace," promising that "he would give her all things necessary with slaves," and offering as an additional