Oh, yes; the state elephant. Well, it was extremely useful, for it rescued four stalwart native servants, laden with tiffin basket and a dozen bottles of mineral water, from toiling up the hills on foot. Perched on his back like nabobs, they probably indulged in remarks disparaging of their masters, electing to walk, and mused maybe upon the theory that now and then man meets his deserts. CHAPTER VIII THE WORLD'S MOST EXQUISITE BUILDING A Mogul ruler who did things was Shah Jahan, and he came of a race not content with ordinary achievements. His grandfather, Akbar, was probably the greatest personage ever born in India. He it was "whose saddle was his throne, the canopy of which was the vaulted dome of heaven." Akbar made Eastern history, made it fast, blazoning it with proud records of conquest and empire extension. Akbar was the grandest man who ever ruled Central India, and it was he who developed the Mogul Empire to the loftiest importance it attained. Shah Jahan embellished the empire with noble structures, and his impulse for building amounted to mania. Time annulled Akbar's achievements, but those of his grandson stand to-day, and the structures of his era are beautiful enough to attract admirers from every corner of the earth. A famous critic once said that Shah Jahan built like a giant and finished like a jeweler. His works have made Agra, of all cities in India, the place of unrivaled interest. [Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA] Agra's Taj Mahal is the most exquisite building ever erected by the hands of man, and is a romance as deftly wrought in marble as any writer ever fashioned in words. It marks a great man's love for a woman--Arjamand Banu Begum, his wife. Shah Jahan was a Mohammedan despot who led a magnificent life, and had other wives; but in his eyes the peer of her sex was Arjamand. When she died in giving birth to a child, he declared he would rear to her memory a mausoleum so perfect that it would make men marvel for all time. And this he accomplished. More poetry and prose have been written about the Taj, with more allusions to it as a symbol of love, than of any other creation marking human affection--and the secret probably lies in the fact that all the world loves a lover. Arjamand had many titles of rank and endearment, but poets like Sir Edwin Arnold preferred to speak of her as Mumtaz-i-Mahal, meaning the "Exalted of the Palace," when extolling the charms of this splendid niece of Nur-Mahal, who likewise had been famed for beauty and charity.