Every maharajah always tries to make his wedding and coronation ceremonies grander, and more extravagant and memorable than anybody’s else have been since history began; and there are plenty whose interest it is to encourage him, and to help him do it; money-lenders, for instance.  But Utirupa not only had two magnificent ceremonies to unite in one, but Yasmini to supply the genius.  The preparations made the very priests gasp (and they were used to orgies of extravagance—­ taught and preached and profited by them in fact.)

Once or twice Tess remonstrated, but Yasmini turned a scornfully deaf ear.

“What would you have us do instead?  Invest all the money at eight per cent., so that the rich traders may have more capital, and found an asylum where Bimbu, Umra and Pinga may live in idleness and be rebuked for mirth?”

“Bimbu, Umra and Pinga might be put to work,” said Tess.  “As for mirth, they laugh at such unseemly things.  They could be taught what proper humor is.”

“Have they not worked?” Yasmini asked.  “Has one man got into your house, without you, or the guard set to watch you, knowing it?  Could any one have done it better?  Did it not have to be done?  As for humor—­ have they not enjoyed the task?  Has it not been a sweeter tale in their ears than the story-teller’s at the corner, because they have told it to themselves and acted a part in it?”

“Well,” said Tess, “you can’t convince me!  There are institutions that could be founded with all that money you and your husband are going to spend on ceremony, that would do good.”

“Institutions?” Yasmini’s eyes grew ablaze with blue indignant fire.  “There were institutions in this land before the English came, which need attention before we worry ourselves over new ones.  Play was one of them, and I will revive it first!  The people used to dance under the trees by moonlight.  Do they do it now?  It is true they used to die of famine in the bad years, growing much too fat in good ones, and the English have changed that.  But I will give them back the gladness, if I can, that has been squeezed out by too many ‘institutions!’ "

“You would rather see Bimbu, Umra and Pinga happy, than prosperous and well-clothed?”

“Which would you rather?” Yasmini asked her.  “You shall see them well clothed in a little while.  Just wait.”

There were almost endless altercations with the priests.  Utirupa himself was known to have profound Sikh tendencies—­a form of liberalism in religion that produced almost as much persecution at one time as Protestantism did in Europe.  To marry a woman openly who had no true claim to caste at all, as Yasmini, being the daughter of a foreigner, had not, was in the eyes of the priests almost as great an offense as Yasmini’s father’s, who crossed the kali pani (ocean) and married abroad in defiance of them.  So the priests demanded the most elaborate ritual of purification that ingenuity could devise, together with staggering sums of money.  Utirupa’s eventual threat to lead a reform movement in Rajputana brought them to see reason, however, and they eventually compromised, with a stipulation that the public should not be told how much had been omitted.