from a far-off 250-year-old world vanished in a flash. The mystic forms that brushed past me with their quick unbodied steps, and loud voiceless laughter and threw themselves into the river, did not go back past me wringing their dripping apparels as they came. Like fragrance wafted away by the wind they were dispersed by a single breath of the spring.
Then I was filled with a lively apprehension that it was the Muse that had taken advantage of my solitude and possessed me—the witch had evidently come to ruin a poor devil like myself making a living by collecting cotton duties. I decided to have a substantial dinner—it is the empty stomach that all sorts of incurable diseases find an easy prey. I sent for my cook and gave orders for a rich, sumptuous 'moghlai' dinner redolent of spices and ghee.
Next morning the whole affair appeared awfully funny. With a light heart I put on a sola hat like the sahibs and drove out to my supervising work. I was to have written my quarterly report that day and expected to return late; but before it was dark I felt strangely drawn to my house—by whom I could not say—but I thought as if they were all waiting and I should delay no longer. Leaving my report unfinished I rose, put on my sola hat, and startling by the rattle of my carriage the shady desolate path wrapped in evening gloom I reached that vast silent palace standing on the dark skirts of the hills.
In the first floor the stairs led to a very spacious hall, its roof stretching wide over ornamental arches resting on three rows of massive pillars, and groaning day and night under the weight of its own intense solitude. The day had just closed and the lamps had not yet been lighted. As I pushed the door open a great bustle seemed to follow within, as if an assembly broke up in confusion and rushed out through the doors and windows and corridors and verandahs and rooms, to make their hurried escape.
As I saw no one I stood bewildered, my hair on end in a kind of ecstatic delight, and a faint scent of attar and unguents almost effaced by age lingered in my nose. Standing in the darkness of that vast desolate hall between the rows of those ancient pillars, I could hear the gurgle of fountains emptying on the marble floor, a strange tune in the guitar, the jingle of ornaments and the tinkle of anklets, the clang of bells announcing the hours, the distant note of 'nahabat', the din of the crystal pendants of chandeliers shaken by the breeze, the song of bulbuls from the cages in the corridors, the cackle of storks in the gardens, all creating round me a strange unearthly music.
Then I came under such a spell that this intangible, inaccessible, unearthly affair appeared to be the only reality in the world—and all else a mere dream. That I, that is to say, Srijut so-and-so, the eldest son of so-and-so of blessed memory, was drawing a monthly salary of Rs. 450 by the discharge of my duties as collector of cotton duties, and driving in my dog-cart to office every day in a short coat and sola hat, appeared to me to be such an astonishingly ludicrous illusion that I burst into a horse-laugh, as I stood in the gloom of that vast silent hall.
At that moment my servant entered with a lighted kerosene lamp in his hand. I do not know whether he thought me mad but I came at once to remember that I was in very deed, Srijut so-and-so, son of so-and-so of blessed memory, and that while our poets, great and small, alone could say whether inside or outside the earth there was a region where unseen fountains perpetually played and fairy guitars struck by invisible fingers sent forth an eternal harmony, this at any rate was certain that I collected duties at the cotton market at Barich and earned thereby Rs. 450 per mensem as my salary. I laughed in great glee over my curious illusion as I sat over the newspaper at my camp-table lighted by the kerosene lamp.
After I had finished my paper and eaten my 'Moghlai' dinner I put out the lamp and lay down on my bed in a small side-room. Through the open window a radiant star, high above the Avalli hills skirted by the darkness of their woods, was gazing intently from millions and millions of miles away in the sky at Mr. Collector lying on a humble camp-bedstead, and I wondered and felt amused at the idea, and do not know when I fell asleep or how long I slept, but I suddenly awoke with a start, though I heard no sound and saw no intruder—
