When dinner was over I asked permission to retire, and His Highness gave orders for a guard with lanterns to conduct me to my door. We got home at half-past one. The next day, Sunday, I spent in a similar way at the Palace. I found His Highness better. After being with him a short time I withdrew to the Durbar room, where lunch was served for me. [Sidenote: The New Kabul.] I was called in again in the afternoon and His Highness continued his conversation. He spoke much about European customs, and surprised me by the extent and accuracy of his knowledge. The Courtiers sat listening, dumb with admiration at the “boundless knowledge of the great King.” He told me of the city of his dreams, the new Kabul, that he hoped to build in the Charhardeh Valley, drawing a plan of the city and of its fortifications. I enquired whether there were materials for building near at hand; and asked where he would get his water supply from, and so on, and he entered into all the details most willingly. He gave me further information about the Afghans as a nation: though he described more their obvious characteristics than those that are unknown to European investigators. He sent for samples of native drugs and plants, and instructed me in their alleged action on the human body. At dinner, soup was brought for my especial benefit, for the Amîr knew that Europeans took soup before meat when they dined. The conversation then turned upon the making of soup, and His Highness sent for the cooking utensils that were used by his cook and described the process to me. I did not know how soup was made, but I knew how to extract the nourishing properties of meat, and I described the making of “beef tea,” giving the reasons for each step in the process. After dinner--I forget what led up to it--I asked for a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, and having cut a square the size of the palm of my hand, I said to His Highness that I could cut a hole in it big enough to put my head through: would he ask his Courtiers if they could do the same. One after another they took the paper, and the Amîr seemed much amused as they turned it every way, and finally declared the thing was impossible. It was given back to me and I made the usual cuts. One down the middle and others alternately from the middle cut and from the outer edge--this fashion. [Illustration] Of course, it would go over my head then. The Amîr enjoyed immensely the astonishment and discomfiture of the Courtiers, and laughed heartily as he mocked and jeered at them. [Sidenote: The Kafir Page, Malek.] All this time the little Page boys had to be standing, and they looked dreadfully tired. One of them, the Amîr’s favourite, had fever. He was a slave from Kaffristan, about fourteen, named Malek. He was fair-skinned and quite like an English boy in face, though he wore two large emeralds looped in each ear by a ring of gold. There was a hard frost that night, and we did not get home till half-past two.