"Oah, yes, _here!_ But when I go home I must conciliate popular superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will anoint idols." "And hang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into caste again and make a good _khuttri_ of you again, you advanced social Free-thinker. And you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you." "I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. "Once a Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they know." "I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to you." I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale. "_Beshak_," he said, philosophically. "_Lekin darwaza band hai_. (Without doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an Englishman--a cow-fed _Malechh_--an outcast. By Jove, that is most peculiar!" "Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let's think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations." "Does he know that?" said Grish Chunder, quietly, swinging his legs as he sat on my table. He was speaking in English now. "He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!" "There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for libel." "Let's leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his being made to speak?" "There is a chance. Oah, yess! But _if_ he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now--_instanto_--fall down on your head. These things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut." "Not a ghost of a chance?" "How can there be? You are a Christian, and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I passed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on Wordsworth. Trailing clouds of glory, you know." "This seems to be an exception to the rule."