"You ought to be ashamed to talk such nonsense, Babu," coldly remarked
Gulab-Sing. "I do not think myself worthy of being anybody's Guru. As to
my being a god, the mere words are a blasphemy, and I must ask you not
to repeat them... Here we are!" added he more cheerfully, pointing to
the carpets spread by the servants on the shore, and evidently desirous
of changing the topic. "Let us sit down!"

We arrived at a small glade some distance from the bamboo forest.
The sounds of the magic orchestra reached us still, but considerably
weakened, and only from time to time. We sat to the windward of the
reeds, and so the harmonic rustle we heard was exactly like the low
tones of an Aeolian harp, and had nothing disagreeable in it. On the
contrary, the distant murmur only added to the beauty of the whole scene
around us.

We sat down, and only then I realized how tired and sleepy I was--and
no wonder, after being on foot since four in the morning, and after all
that had happened to me on this memorable day. The gentlemen went
on talking, and I soon became so absorbed in my thoughts that their
conversation reached me only in fragments.

"Wake up, wake up!" repeated the colonel, shaking me by the hand. "The
Takur says that sleeping in the moonlight will do you harm."

I was not asleep; I was simply thinking, though ex-hausted and sleepy.
But wholly under the charm of this enchanting night, I could not shake
off my drowsiness, and did not answer the colonel.

"Wake up, for God's sake! Think of what you are risking!" continued the
colonel. "Wake up and look at the landscape before us, at this wonderful
moon. Have you ever seen anything to equal this magnificent panorama?"

I looked up, and the familiar lines of Pushkin about the golden moon of
Spain flashed into my mind. And indeed this was a golden moon. At this
moment she radiated rivers of golden light, poured forth liquid gold
into the tossing lake at our feet, and sprinkled with golden dust every
blade of grass, every pebble, as far as the eye could reach, all round
us. Her disk of silvery yellow swiftly glided upward amongst the big
stars, on their dark blue ground.

Many a moonlit night have I seen in India, but every time the impression
was new and unexpected. It is no use trying to describe these feerique
pictures, they cannot be represented either in words or in colors on
canvas, they can only be felt--so fugitive is their grandeur and beauty!
In Europe, even in t