ahib, upon getting my old bones up to the Fort?" Driven to his last
defences, the Political said simply: "Well, Maharana Sahib, the place is
close to the road, you see, and ..." The King saw and said: "Oh,
_that's_ it? I've been puzzling my brain for four days to find out what
on earth you were driving at. I'll go to-night." "But there may be some
difficulty," began the Political. "You think so," said the King. "If I
only hold up my little finger, the women will obey me. Go now, and come
back in five minutes, and all will be ready for departure." As a matter
of fact, the Political withdrew for the space of fifteen minutes, and
gave orders that the conveyances which he had kept in readiness day and
night should be got ready. In fifteen minutes those twenty women, with
their handmaidens, were packed and ready for departure; and the King
died later at the Fort, and nothing happened. Here the Englishman asked
why a frantic woman must of necessity become a _sati_, and felt properly
abashed when he was told that she _must_. There was nothing else for her
if she went out unveiled.

The rush-out forces the matter. And, indeed, if you consider the matter
from the Rajput point of view it does.

Then followed a very grim tale of the death of another King; of the
long vigil by his bedside, before he was taken off the bed to die upon
the ground; of the shutting of a certain mysterious door behind the
bed-head, which shutting was followed by a rustle of women's dress; of a
walk on the top of the palace, to escape the heated air of the sick
room; and then, in the grey dawn, the wail upon wail breaking from the
zenana as the news of the King's death went in. "I never wish to hear
anything more horrible and awful in my life. You could see nothing. You
could only hear the poor wretches," said the Political, with a shiver.

The last resting-place of the Maharanas of Udaipur is at Ahar, a little
village two miles east of the City. Here they go down in their robes of
state, their horse following behind, and here the Political saw, after
the death of a Maharana, the dancing-girls dancing before the poor white
ashes, the musicians playing among the cenotaphs, and the golden hookah,
sword, and water-vessel laid out for the naked soul doomed to hover
twelve days round the funeral pyre, before it could depart on its
journey toward a fresh birth. Once, in a neighbouring State it is said,
one of the dancing-girls stole a march in the next world's