and they met in some secret lonely spot, as a mountain, a terrace, a
bower or a forest, whence women, parrots, and other talkative
birds were carefully excluded.

And at the end of this useful and somewhat laborious day, he
retired to his private apartments, and, after listening to spiritual
songs and to soft music, he fell asleep. Sometimes he would
summon his brother's "Nine Gems of Science," and give ear to
their learned discourses. But it was observed that the viceroy
reserved this exercise for nights when he was troubled with
insomnia--the words of wisdom being to him an infallible remedy
for that disorder.

Thus passed onwards his youth, doing nothing that it could desire,
forbidden all pleasures because they were unprincely, and working
in the palace harder than in the pauper's hut. Having, however,
fortunately for himself, few predilections and no imagination, he
began to pride himself upon being a philosopher. Much business
from an early age had dulled his wits, which were never of the
most brilliant; and in the steadily increasing torpidity of his spirit,
he traced the germs of that quietude which forms the highest
happiness of man in this storm of matter called the world. He
therefore allowed himself but one friend of his soul. He retained, I
have said, his brother's seven or eight ministers; he was constant in
attendance upon the Brahman priests who officiated at the palace,
and who kept the impious from touching sacred property; and he
was courteous to the commander-in-chief who directed his
warriors, to the officers of justice who inflicted punishment upon
offenders, and to the lords of towns, varying in number from one
to a thousand. But he placed an intimate of his own in the high