In the evening, after my conversation with the cultivator upon the wall that united the two hills,[1] I received a visit from my little friend the Sarîmant. His fine rose-coloured turban is always put on very gracefully; every hair of his jet-black eyebrows and mustachios seems to be kept always most religiously in the same place; and he has always the same charming smile upon his little face, which was never, I believe, distorted into an absolute laugh or frown. No man was ever more perfectly master of what the natives call 'the art of rising or sitting' (_nishisht wa barkhâst_), namely, good manners. I should as soon expect to see him set the Nerbudda on fire as commit any infringement of the _convenances_ on this head established in good Indian society, or be guilty of anything vulgar in speech, sentiment, or manners. I asked him by what means it was that the old queen of Sâgar[2] drove out the influenza that afflicted the people so much in 1832, while he was there on a visit to me. He told me that he took no part in the ceremonies, nor was he aware of them till awoke one night by 'the noise, when his attendants informed him that the queen and the greater part of the city were making offerings to the new god, Hardaul Lâla. He found next morning that a goat had been offered up with as much noise as possible, and with good effect, for the disease was found to give way from that moment. About six years before, when great numbers were dying in his own little capital of Pithoria[3] from a similar epidemic, he had, he said, tried the same thing with still greater effect; but, on that occasion, he had the aid of a man very learned in such matters. This man caused a small carriage to be made up after a plan of his own, for _a pair of scape- goats_, which were harnessed to it, and driven during the ceremonies to a wood some distance from the town, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats never returned. 'Had they come back,' said Sarîmant, 'the disease must have come back with them; so he took them a long way into the wood--indeed (he believed), the man, to make sure of them, had afterwards caused them to be offered up as a sacrifice to the shrine of Hardaul Lâla, in that very wood. He had himself never seen a _pûjâ_ (religious ceremony) so entirely and immediately efficacious as this, and much of its success was, no doubt, attributable to the _science_ of the man who planned the carriage, and himself drove the pair of goats to the wood. No one had ever before heard of the plan of a pair of _scape-goats_ being driven in a carriage; but it was likely (he thought) to be extensively adopted in future.'[4]