Page 159 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

AN IMPERIAL DESPOT IN DRESS AND UNDRESS 159

protested. At night there was the usual wassail, which
Roe was told he must attend, but remembering that their
“ waters are fire,” he stayed at home on the plea of ill-
health.
In less than a month from this celebration Prince Khur-
rum returned in triumph from his campaign in the Deccan-
It is a curious example of the irony of history that his
father heaped upon him on this occasion the most profuse
honours, conferring upon him the title of Shah Jehan
(Lord of the World), making him a Mansabdar, with the
command of 20,000 horsemen, and yielding to him the
right to sit on a chair next to the throne—and all this in
that same Mandu in which Jehangir, after deposition by
the son he now honoured, was to pass the last days of his
life a prisoner.
Khurrum bore his new honours with the arrogance of a
proud nature, and a less skilful student of human nature
than Roe would have paid assiduous court to him. But
the ambassador knew from his experience of Orientals
that the very worst course he could pursue would be to
pander to the great man. The line he took towards him
was, if anything, a trifle more independent than that he had
followed in the days when the prince’s star was by no means
in the ascendant. In accordance with established etiquette
he rode to the Prince’s tent a few days after the triumphal
entry to tender his congratulations.
The prince sent out word to him that he must either
attend the next morning, when he sat in durbar, or stay
until his riding to Court, a course which would have
entailed the necessity of Roe hanging about the door of the
tent for a considerable time.
“ This,” writes Roe, “ I took in extreme scorn, his father