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That night the gracious Princess Thawadee conceived and became with child, and the P'hra Somannass was no longer a prince of the highest heaven. The Princess Thawadee had been the only and darling daughter of a mighty king, and still mourned her separation from her beloved sire. Her only solace was to sit in the phrasat of the Grand Palace, and look with longing toward her early home.
"But what manner of birth, is this that she has conceived, in that it has already brought grief and death into the land? For as the Queen sat in the porch of the temple, a great flight of birds that hastened, thirsty, toward the valleys of the east, when they would have passed over the phrasat were struck dead, as by an unseen spirit of mischief.
It is consecrated; and here dead sovereigns of Siam lie in state, waiting twelve months for their cremation; here also their ashes are deposited, in urns of gold, after that fiery consummation. In the Maha Phrasat the supreme king is crowned and all court ceremonies performed.
Meanwhile the four already mentioned still prayed, day and night, at the Maha Phrasat. A service was likewise performed for the royal family twice a day, in an adjacent temporary chapel, where all the court attended, including the noble ladies of the harem, who occupy private oratories, hung with golden draperies, behind which they can see and hear without being seen.
Each of the separate buildings it comprises is cruciform; and even the palace lately erected in the style of Windsor Castle forms with the old palace the arms of a cross, as the latter does with the Phrasat, and so on down to an odd little conceit in architecture, in the Chinese style throughout.
She became thoughtful for her people, and presently found happiness in dispensing food, raiment, and comfort to the poor who flocked to see her. One day, as she was reposing in the porch after her customary benefactions, a cloud of birds, flying eastward, fell dead as they passed over the phrasat. The sages and soothsayers of the court were terrified. What might the omen be?
The inner urn has an iron grating in the bottom, and the outer an orifice at its most pendent point, through which by means of a tap or stop-cock, the fluids are drawn off daily, until the cadavre has become quite dry. This double rim was borne on a gilt sedan, under a royal gilt umbrella, to the temple of the Maha Phrasat, where it was mounted on a graduated platform about six feet high.
The funeral orchestra then played a wailing dirge, and the mourning women broke into a concerted and prolonged keen, of the most ear-piercing and heart-rending description. When the fire had quite burned itself out, all that remained of the bones, charred and blackened, was carefully gathered, deposited in a third and smaller urn of gold, and again conveyed in great state to the Maha Phrasat.
Afterward, two ladies of the court led him down the flight of marble steps, where two maidens washed his feet with pure water in a gold basin, and wiped them with fine linen. On his way to the Maha Phrasat he was met by a group of girls in charming attire, who held before him tufts of palm and branches of gold and silver.
On the morning of the 3d of April, 1851, the Chowfa Mongkut, after being formally apprised of his election by the Senabawdee to the supreme throne, was borne in state to a residence adjoining the Phrasat, to await the auspicious day of coronation, the 15th of the following month, as fixed by the court astrologers; and when it came it was hailed by all classes of the people with immoderate demonstrations of joy; for to their priest king, more sacred than a conqueror, they were drawn by bonds of superstition as well as of pride and affection.
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