parties and jewelry for the men, and picnics and Cashmere shawls for the ladies. If a subaltern's wife required change of air the Maharajah's carriage was at the service of the young couple, and the European apartments at Bithoor were put in order to receive them. If a civilian had overworked himself in court, he had but to speak the word, and the Maharajah's elephants were sent to the Oude jungles for him to go tiger hunting; but none the less did he ever, for a moment, forget the grudge he bore the English people. While his face was all smiles, in his heart of hearts he brooded over the judgment of the Government, and the refusal of his despised claim.
The men who, with his presented sapphires and rubies glittering on their fingers, sat there laughing around his table, had each and all been doomed to die by a warrant that admitted of no appeal. He had sworn that the injustice should be expiated by the blood of ladies who had never heard his grievance named, of babies who had been born years after the question of that grievance had passed into oblivion. The great crime of Cawnpore blackened the pages of history with a far deeper stain than Sicilian vespers or St. Bartholomew massacres, for this atrocious deed was prompted neither by diseased nor mistaken patriotism, nor by the madness of superstition. The motives of the deed were as mean as the execution was cowardly and treacherous. Among the subordinate villains there might be some who were possessed by bigotry and class hatred, but Nana Sahib was actuated by no higher impulses than ruffled pride and disappointed avarice.
The Hindoos, and particularly the military class of them, looked up to this man as their Peishwa. His position gave him immense influence. They would go with him to the side which he espoused. It is understood that he was tampered with, and made a tool of, by the Delhi faction under promise that when the English were expelled the country the Emperor would recognize his claims, and give him the throne of his reputed father at Poonah; so he threw in his lot with the conspiracy and bided his time.
3. The Mohammedan monopoly of place and power is another
