Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/455

 *ness and defilement! Perhaps they cooked the sū'ar, the hog, the unclean beast, within the sleeping apartments of Noor-jahān,—the proud, the beautiful Sultana!

In this turret I took refuge for some time, from the heat of the noon-day sun. What visions of former times passed through my brain! How I pictured to myself the beautiful Empress, until her portrait was clear and well defined in my imagination: still, it bore an European impress. I had never entered the private apartments of any native lady of rank, and I longed to behold one of those women of whose beauty I had heard so much; I had seen two paintings of native women, who were very beautiful; but the very fact that these women had been beheld by European gentlemen, degraded them to a class respecting which I had no curiosity. I was now in the deserted zenāna of the most beautiful woman recorded in history; and one whose talents and whose power over the Emperor, made her, in fact, the actual sovereign; she governed the empire from behind the parda. The descendants of Jahāngeer, in their fallen greatness, were still at Delhi; and I determined, if possible, to visit the ladies of the royal zenāna now in existence.

The zenāna masjid, a gem of beauty, is a small mosque, sacred to the ladies of the zenāna, of pure white marble, beautifully carved, with three domes of the same white marble.

The shīsha-mahal, or house of glass, is both curious and elegant, although the material is principally pounded tālc and looking-glass. It consists of two rooms, of which the walls in the interior are divided into a thousand different panels, each of which is filled up with raised flowers in silver, gold, and colours, on a ground-work of tiny convex mirrors! The idea it impresses on the mind is that of being inside some curiously worked and arched box, so unlike is the apartment to a room! The roof reminds you of the style of ceiling that prevailed during the time of Louis the XIV., and resembles the ceilings at Versailles. Pounded mica has the effect of silver. Fronting the entrance, in the second room, are three rows of niches for lights, and below, standing forward a little, there are more rows of marble niches for the same. From the top, the