He had not played so prominent a part on that occasion without profiting by the lesson he had learnt; and knowing well the character of the woman with whom he had to deal, he took care to obtain accurate intelligence of all that transpired at court.

Information soon reached him that a plot was formed against his life, and that the post of premier had already been promised to his intended murderer, as a reward for so dangerous a service.  Once more the command, which had proved so fatal to Mahtabar Singh, issued from the palace, desiring the immediate attendance of the minister; the messenger was the very man at whose hand Jung was to meet his doom.  He had scarcely delivered his treacherous message, when he was struck to the ground by one of the attendants of the prime minister.  Jung then proceeded on his way to the palace, where he at once demanded of the Rajah to be dismissed from office, or to be furnished with authority to order the destruction of all the enemies of the heir-apparent.  The King could not refuse to grant the authority demanded; and it was no sooner granted than Jung seized and beheaded all the adherents of the conspirator.

As the Ranee herself was the most inveterate enemy of the young Prince, the Rajah’s order was at once carried into effect against her, and, to her infinite astonishment, she was informed by Jung that she was to leave Nepaul immediately, accompanied by her two sons.  It was of no use to resist the successful young adventurer, whose indomitable courage and good fortune had triumphed over the plots and intrigues of his enemies, and who thus saw himself freed from every obstacle to his quiet possession of the government.

The Rajah accompanied the Queen to Benares.  Meantime the heir-apparent was raised to the throne, and the whole administrative power vested in his minister.

Upon hearing of the installation of his son as Rajah, the old Monarch seemed to evince, for the first and last time in his life, some little interest in proceedings by which he himself was so seriously affected, and the result was a feeble determination not to relinquish his throne without a final struggle.  Urged to this course probably by the persuasions of the ambitious and disappointed Ranee, he collected a few followers, and crossed the southern frontier of Nepaul.  Jung, however, had received timely notice of his intention, and the luckless King had no sooner encamped in the Nepaul dominions, than he was surprised at night by the troops of the minister, and his small forces utterly routed, four or five hundred remaining killed or wounded upon the field.  The Rajah himself was taken prisoner, and placed in confinement by the dutiful son who now occupies the throne, and who sometimes allows him, on grand occasions, to take his seat upon it next to himself.

The vacillating conduct of the imbecile old man throughout his whole reign, the apathy with which he was contented to remain a passive spectator of those bloody dramas of which his court was for so long a period the theatre, deprive him of all claim to commiseration in his present degraded position, which, in fact, is the natural result of his indifference to the game so eagerly played by the contending parties, and of which the stake was his own throne.