hospitality was daily extended to several hundred guests. Isaak Khan had given in his adhesion to the sovereignty of Aga Mahomed, and had been treated with great confidence and distinction by that politic monarch, whose example in this respect was followed by Fetteh Ali Shah. But Isaak Khan seems to have viewed with personal dislike the Kajar Prince Mahomed Veli Meerza, who had been appointed to rule over Khorassan, and again and again he attempted to obtain from the Shah the recall of his son. These intrigues were not unknown to the Veli of Khorassan; but Isaak Khan continued as usual to attend the levees of the prince, and to obey his authority. The Shahzadeh, fearing lest at last he should lose his government owing to the hostile influence of the Karai chief, determined upon taking a step at which the boldest might have hesitated. No man in Persia possessed more influence than Isaak Khan, and no man was so likely to be missed as he whose unbounded hospitality had been experienced by hundreds of thousands of the subjects of the Shah. But fear for his own position drove the prince to desperation, and on a certain day when the chiefs were assembled at his levee Isaak Khan and his son were successively seized and strangled in his presence. Such an act, as might have been predicted, called down on the prince a storm of indignation, which it was difficult to appease. The other chiefs, each fearing for himself, fled each to his stronghold, and the king was compelled by the general clamour to recall the governor of Khorassan. But it was said that in this act Mahomed Veli was only carrying out the policy prescribed to him by his father, who, like Tarquin, was of opinion that his son's course would be more
