Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/435

Rh when this blasphemous usurpation, arrested by the hand of God, and about to be hurled from all its aspirations of supremacy over the mind of India, a Minister of Jesus Christ should, in this presence, ring, as it were, the knell of its hopes, and utter those truths as the last Imperial representative of Oriental Mohammedanism was bidding a “long farewell to all his greatness,” and the political power of his system was falling,

My wife went in to see the Empress, and found her, with two of her maids, very plainly dressed and but poorly lodged. When she came out, she was not at all enthusiastic about the Empress's present beauty. Still, competent evidence declares that Zeenat Mahal, as she appeared in 1846, is faithfully represented in the picture presented on page 111; but twenty years of such a life as she led in that Zenana, and the apprehension of guilt which she must then have felt, with the doom impending over her husband and house, all must have wrought sad changes in that once fair young face.

From the Emperor we went to the cells where the other prisoners were awaiting their trial. These cells were in a sort of offset from the palace grounds, in which stood the beautiful Dewanee Khass, and had doors of iron railing, through which the prisoners could glance across into the palace gardens beyond. It strikingly suggested the separation, and yet sight, of each other in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We walked past some of them, and it was sad to see within these iron doors, awaiting their fate, men like the Rajah of Dadree, the Nawab of Bullubghur, and others of their class. Twelve months before, these captives were occupying thrones, and governing their States in peace, under the protection of the paramount power of England; and here they were now, awaiting their turn to be tried for treason, and, some of them, for murder as well. They had sided with the Emperor, sending their troops and treasure to Delhi to aid him against the British, and his defeat and fall had dragged them down into the ruin which had