should never have discovered it), were under these painful
circumstances made aware of my beloved Belinda's partiality for me.
Having communicated thus her wish of self-destruction, I thought
her example a touching and excellent one, and proposed to all the
ladies that they should follow it, and that at the entry of the
enemy into the fort, and at a signal given by me, they should one
and all make away with themselves. Fancy my disgust when, after
making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to
it, and received it with the same chilling denial that my former
proposal to the garrison had met with.

"In the midst of this hurry and confusion, as if purposely to add
to it, a trumpet was heard at the gate of the fort, and one of the
sentinels came running to me, saying that a Mahratta soldier was
before the gate with a flag of truce!

"I went down, rightly conjecturing, as it turned out, that the
party, whoever they might be, had no artillery; and received at the
point of my sword a scroll of which the following is a translation.


"'To Goliah Gahagan Gujputi.

"'LORD OF ELEPHANTS, SIR,--I have the honour to inform you that I
arrived before this place at eight o'clock p.m. with ten thousand
cavalry under my orders. I have burned, since my arrival,
seventeen bungalows in Furruckabad and Futtyghur, and have likewise
been under the painful necessity of putting to death three
clergymen (mollahs) and seven English officers, whom I found in the
village; the women have been transferred to safe keeping in the