The Palace was a four-roomed, and whitewashed mud and timber-house, the finest in all the hills for a day’s journey.  The King was dressed in a purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban of price.  He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State.  The great beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his back stood out grandly against the mist.

The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals.  The King cast a wreath of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honoured presence had the felicity to be.  I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be remembered by the Gods.  He said that since I had set my magnificent foot in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent. more than the average.  I said that the fame of the King had reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they heard daily of the glories of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General of Public Education.

Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King’s right hand.  Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize crop was something disgraceful, and that the Railway companies would not pay him enough for his timber.  The talk shifted to and fro with the bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became confidential on the subject of Government generally.  Most of all he dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could gather, had been paralysing the executive.

‘In the old days,’ said the King, ’I could have ordered the Elephant yonder to trample him to death.  Now I must e’en send him seventy miles across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State.  The Elephant eats everything.’

‘What be the man’s crimes, Rajah Sahib?’ said I.

’Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people.  Secondly, since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to pay revenue.  Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop?  Yet this devil, establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a poisonous spawn of babes.’

‘Cast him into jail,’ I said.

‘Sahib,’ the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, ’once and only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not able to go abroad.  In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God; for I perceived the nature of the punishment.  How can I break my vow?  Were it only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay.  But even that is impossible now that the English have rule.  One or another of my people’—­he looked obliquely at the Director-General of Public Education—­’would at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of my ruffle of drums.’