The negotiation now at an end; the Shah expressed his eagerness to commence work without delay; and was argent in his solicitations for an immediate supply of money, arms, and ammunition. He again, too, expressed his desire to conduct the expedition for the recovery of his dominions, as one relying mainly upon the strength of his own army. He wished to obtain the assistance of British officers in raising and disciplining his troops, but he hoped “that the immediate operations for regaining his throne might be conducted” by those troops. Such reliance on his own arms would raise, he said, his character in the estimation of the people, “while the fact of his being upheld by foreign force alone could not fail to detract, in a great measure, from his dignity and consequence.”[245] He had already, he declared, in reply to a suggestion from the British Envoy, sent letters to many persons of influence in Afghanistan, calling upon them to join his standard, and he was certain that thousands would flock to it from all parts of the country.[246] He appeared to be in the highest spirits, and spoke strongly of the debt of gratitude which he owed to the British Government, both for the protection that had been yielded him during past years, and for the more active assistance which was about to confer upon him so much power and grandeur. Macnaghten now took his leave of the Shah, and proceeded with the officers of the Mission to pay a visit to Zemaun Shah, who, blind and powerless, had remained since his dethronement an appendage to the faded Court of his younger brother, dreaming over the past grandeur of his magnificent reign, and sighing to revisit the scene of his bygone glories. Vague rumours of the intention of the British Government to restore the Suddozye Princes to the sovereignty of Afghanistan had reached him in his dreary exile; and now that the British Envoy was at his door, so eager was he to learn the whole truth, that almost before the ordinary salutations had been exchanged, he pressed Macnaghten for a full revelation of the glad tidings of which he was the bearer. The intelligence, which the English gentleman imparted to him, stirred the heart of the old blind Prince with joy and exultation. “He seemed filled with delight at the prospect of being permitted to revisit the land of his ancestors.”[247] This was the first gleam of good fortune that had burst upon him for many years; and it was a curious and affecting sight to mark the effect which the announcement of the good offices of the British wrought upon one, who, forty years before, had threatened vast expeditions to the southward, which had filled the British in India with anxiety and alarm.