Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/100

74 in his cups, when the candles were immediately "popped out" and Sir Thomas "groppt" his way out in the dark. Jahangir especially piqued himself on his taste for art; pictures and statues, even of the Madonna, adorned his palace, and in the hall of audience were displayed pictures of "the King of England, the Queen, the Lady Elizabeth, the Countesse of Somerset and Salisbury, and of a Citizen's wife of London; below them, another of Sir Thomas Smith, Governour of the East-India Companie." When Roe showed him an English picture, he immediately had it copied by Indian artists, so that the owner could not tell which was the original, whereat the Great Moghul "was very merry and joyfull, and craked like a Northerne man." In his usual communicative mood of an evening, "with many passages of jests, mirth, and bragges concerning the Arts of his Country, hee fell to aske me questions, how often I drank a day, and how much, and what? what Beere was? how made? and whether I could make it here? In all which I satisfied his great demands of State."

The ambassador must have found the privy council room of an evening anything but a suitable place for business. One night he was summoned thither after he had got to bed, merely to show the Great Moghul a portrait. "When I came in I found him sitting cross-legd on a little Throne, all clad in Diamonds, Pearls, and Rubies, before him a table of Gold, in it about fiftie pieces of Gold plate, set all with stones, his Nobilitie about him in their best equipage, whom he commanded to drinke froliquely, several wines standing by in great