The sun was high when those men with their horses and on foot marched down the winding causeway beneath the seven gates, and so forth into the plains, and charging unarmed upon the Moslems, they perished every man. After, it was asked of one who had seen the great slaughter,-- “Say how my King bore himself.” And he who had seen told this:-- “Reaper of the harvest of battle, on the bed of honour he has spread a carpet of the slain! He sleeps ringed about by his enemies. How can the world tell of his deeds? The tongue is silent.” When that Accursed, Allah-u-Din, came up the winding height of the hills, he found only a dead city, and his heart was sick within him. Now this is the Sack of Chitor, and by the Oath of the Sack of Chitor do the Rajputs swear when they bind their honour. But it is only the ascetic Visravas who by the power of his yoga has heard every word, and with his eyes beheld that Flame of Beauty, who, for a brief space illuminating the world as a Queen, returns to birth in many a shape of sorrowful loveliness until the Blue-throated God shall in his favour destroy her rebirths. Salutation to Ganesa the Elephant-Headed One, and to Shri the Lady of Beauty! THE BUILDING OF THE TAJ MAHAL In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful--the Smiting! A day when the soul shall know what it has sent on or kept back. A day when no soul shall control aught for another. And the bidding belongs to God. THE KORAN. I Now the Shah-in-Shah, Shah Jahan, Emperor in India, loved his wife with a great love. And of all the wives of the Mogul Emperors surely this Lady Arjemand, Mumtaz-i-Mahal---the Chosen of the Palace--was the most worthy of love. In the tresses of her silk-soft hair his heart was bound, and for none other had he so much as a passing thought since his soul had been submerged in her sweetness. Of her he said, using the words of the poet Faisi,-- “How shall I understand the magic of Love the Juggler? For he made thy beauty enter at that small gate the pupil of my eye, And now--and now my heart cannot contain it!”