protested. At night there was the usual wassail, which Roe was told he must attend, but remembering that their "waters are fire," he stayed at home on the plea of ill-health.
In less than a month from this celebration Prince Khurrum returned in triumph from his campaign in the Deccan. It is a curious example of the irony of history that his father heaped upon him on this occasion the most profuse honours, conferring upon him the title of Shah Jehan (Lord of the World), making him a Mansabdar, with the command of 20,000 horsemen, and yielding to him the right to sit on a chair next to the throne—and all this in that same Mandu in which Jehangir, after deposition by the son he now honoured, was to pass the last days of his life a prisoner.
Khurrum bore his new honours with the arrogance of a proud nature, and a less skilful student of human nature than Roe would have paid assiduous court to him. But the ambassador knew from his experience of Orientals that the very worst course he could pursue would be to pander to the great man. The line he took towards him was, if anything, a trifle more independent than that he had followed in the days when the prince's star was by no means in the ascendant. In accordance with established etiquette he rode to the Prince's tent a few days after the triumphal entry to tender his congratulations.
The prince sent out word to him that he must either attend the next morning, when he sat in durbar, or stay until his riding to Court, a course which would have entailed the necessity of Roe hanging about the door of the tent for a considerable time.
"This," writes Roe, "I took in extreme scorn, his father
