Day after day passed, and these scenes were repeated. Corpses lay in the streets, and “there was none to bury them;” so that the steams of pestilence began to rise and load the air with the elements of destruction. For two or three days the heroic widow of Jugmul, who now directed the defence of Chittore, was confined to her couch; but the moment she was able to rise, she quitted her house and repaired to the ramparts. The despair of the citizens had reached her ears; she heard it in moody silence, but calmly gave her orders, and, summoning her chief officers, among whom was Peirup Singh, she said-- “The enemy are invincible, and we have nothing now but to prepare for our final change. I need not tell you how the Rajpoot comports himself at this hour of extremity.” “Nay, why this despair?” asked Peirup Singh. “We are not yet vanquished. The garrison is still numerous, our soldiers are brave, and our enemies enfeebled by the late conflict.” “They are mighty in their strength; we are only mighty in our weakness--they to vanquish, but we to perish. I need not bid you prepare, because I know none of our blood can be backward to meet death as becomes the brave.” Peirup Singh, though a courageous man, was by no means prepared for such an issue as the Rajpootni’s widow seemed to contemplate. He loved her daughter, and, with the prospect of enjoyment before him, did not precisely see the necessity of that desperate alternative to which the late governor’s relict alluded. Even should they be obliged to capitulate, the magnanimity of Akbar was too well known to warrant the supposition that he would treat the vanquished with tyranny; the Rajpoot therefore thought that a capitulation in time to so generous an enemy would be their safest policy. When he expressed these sentiments to her, who directed the movements of the besieged, she said, with an indignant glance at the proposer of so degrading an act of pusillanimity-- “What! does the suitor of my daughter make a proposal so unworthy of his race? It is enough; henceforward you are a stranger to my home.” She turned from him, and would not hear his reply. Having given her orders in case an assault should be made by the foe, she visited the houses of those whom despair had urged to fatal extremities. The sad sight only nerved her heart to fiercer resolution. She looked upon the dead without a sigh. She conversed with the dying as if they were about to be hushed in a joyous sleep, and there was neither regret nor anguish in their expiring groans. The dead bodies scattered about the streets, and exhaling the elements of death, moved her not to an emotion. Her soul was passion-cased--it was absorbed by one intense feeling. Upon entering her home she was met by her elder daughter.