The Secretary was in charge of State prisoners, a few of whom, members of the late reigning family of Delhi, still survived. The ex-King, Bahadur Shah, who had been tried and sentenced to death for his share in the massacre of English men and women, had been spared the extreme penalty and sent to Rangoon, where he died in exile. His widow, the Begam Zinath Mahal, was in Rangoon in my charge. She and her daughter-in-law were of such exalted rank that they were not parda-nashín[201] to English officers. More than once I saw the old Begam who, thirty years before, had played so lurid a part in the Mutiny. Though now of advanced age, she retained traces of great beauty and was specially proud of her finely shaped, delicate hands. Her beauty was of the Pit, aquiline, dark, menacing. Her son, Prince Jăwán Băkht (P. J. Băkht, as he used quaintly to style himself on his visiting cards), the direct representative of the Moguls, lived in Rangoon with his wife, Shah Zamani Begam, of the race of Nadir Shah, the Persian Conqueror. Jăwán Băkht was not of specially marked character, amiable and harmless. His wife was a lady of charm and dignity, worthy of her lofty lineage. In her youth beautiful exceedingly, time had but little marred that lovely face. Poor lady, she was totally blind, but the disease which had darkened her sight left no disfigurement and hardly dimmed the lustre of her radiant eyes. She spoke the purest Urdu, in liquid tones sweeter than any I have ever heard in that graceful tongue. Beyond words pathetic it was to see and converse with this lady of a great family, keeping to the last the pride of her race and station, with every mark of a gentle and gracious disposition, reduced to comparative poverty, and sharing without a murmur the hard lot of the last scion of a fallen dynasty. Jăwán Băkht and Shah Zamani Begam have long been gathered to their fathers. Their son and daughter, Mirza Jamshíd Băkht and Ronak Begam, last of the line of Babar and Akbar and Aurangzíb, still live in Rangoon in receipt of miserable stipends. It is true that the decadent Moguls did not deserve well at our hands. Bahadur Shah and Zinath Mahal were treated even more leniently than they merited. But their surviving descendants are innocent of complicity in their crimes. Politically, they have never given the slightest trouble; Mohammedans seem hardly aware of their existence. Somewhat more generous treatment might be accorded them. Their pensions might be made sufficient to enable them to live in reasonable comfort.