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These foreigners have the brass for you! The Nabob's irritation had impressed me all the same, and as I saw his valet going downstairs four steps at a time, I caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear: "What the deuce is the matter with your governor, Monsieur Noël?"
Meer Jaffier, who had merely been stunned for the moment, came to himself directly afterwards, and on looking at the dead man's face recognised him to be no other than the Phouzdar of Purneah himself. We were informed afterwards that he had mistaken us for the Nabob's own bodyguard, and had come out to attack the Nabob himself.
In addition to these proofs, Rajah Gourdas, who had the management of the Nabob's treasury, verbally gave an account perfectly corresponding with that of Nundcomar and the Munny Begum's letter; and he afterwards gave in writing an attestation, which in every point agrees correctly with the others. So that there are three witnesses upon this business.
Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a man fit to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, to exercise all the great and arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the regulation of the Nabob's household; and then I will venture to say, that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was.
This situation, at best so trying to the nerves, was complicated in the Nabob's case by these calumnies, at first whispered, now printed, circulated in thousands of copies by the newspapers, with the consequence that he found himself tacitly put in quarantine by his colleagues.
"Married, why, to be sure, and father of a lot of children. The whole outfit landed here two days ago." She stood for a moment, speechless, her cheeks quivering. In front of her the Nabob's broad visage, in shining clay, with its flat nose, its sensual good-humored mouth, seemed to cry aloud in its fidelity to life.
Being asked, Whether he knows what is done with the palace and inhabitants of Ramnaut? he said, The town was taken by storm, but not plundered by the troops; it was immediately delivered up to the Nabob's eldest son. Being asked, Whether great riches were not supposed to be in that palace and temple? he said, It was universally believed so.
But no, constantly led astray by treacherous illusions, I longed to make a fortune, to speculate, to try banking operations on a grand scale, to tie my fortune to the chariot of the successful financiers of the day; and now here I am at the most melancholy stage of my history, clerk in a ruined counting-house, intrusted with the duty of answering a horde of creditors, of shareholders drunk with rage, who pour out the vilest insults upon my white hairs and would fain hold me responsible for the Nabob's ruin and the governor's flight.
For whereas, by the second article of the treaty aforesaid, it was left to the Nabob's discretion whether or not he should resume the landed estates, called jaghires, within his dominions, and notwithstanding the said Hastings, in defence of the said article, did declare that the Nabob should be left to the exercise of his own authority and pleasure respecting them, yet he, the said Hastings, did authorize a violent compulsion to be used towards the said Nabob for accomplishing an universal confiscation of that species of landed property; and in so doing he did also compel the Nabob to break his faith with all the landholders of that description, not only in violating the assurance of his own original grants, but his assurance recently given, when, being pressed by the Company, he, the Nabob, had made a temporary seizure of the profits of the lands aforesaid, in the manner of a compulsory loan, for the repayment of which he gave his bonds and obligations; and although he had at the same time solemnly pledged his faith that he never would again resort to the like oppressive measure, yet he, the said Warren Hastings, did cause him to be compelled to confiscate the estates of at least sixty-seven of the principal persons of his country, comprehending therein his own nearest relations and the ancient friends and dependants of his family: the annual value of the said estates thus confiscated amounting to 435,000l. sterling, or thereabouts, upon an old valuation, but stated by the Resident, Middleton, as being found to yield considerably more.
"Captain Grant, take three platoons and a field-piece, and see if you can fight off those horse." The order as given was obeyed, the slight demonstration proved sufficient, and the mysterious division drew away again out of range. In the meantime our main body advanced steadily, and kept up a brisk fire on the Nabob's camp with our artillery.
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