He returned to the palace; but had not been home more than three hours, when he and his favourite wife, the Kooduseea Begum,** had a fierce quarrel, in which both became insane; she was so enraged that she took poison forthwith, and, in her agony, actually spit up her liver, which had been torn to pieces by the force of the poison! The King could not stand the horrible sight, and ran off and hid himself in the race-stand, near which you fell and broke your thigh-bone in April last; there he remained shut up till she died.

He had had warning, sir, for a few months after his accession to the throne; I attended him and his minister, Aga Meer, on a visit to the garden, called padshah baag, on the opposite side of the river: he had a gun with him, and, seeing a monkey on a tree, he ordered the prime minister to try his hand at it.

I told Aga Meer that evil would certainly befall him or his house if he shot the animal, and begged his Majesty not to assist upon the minister's doing it.

Both laughed at what they thought my folly; the minister shot the monkey; and in a few days he was out of office and in a prison.

One way or other, sir, a man who wilfully destroys a monkey is sure to be punished." [* That Asgur Allee Khan, the eldest son of the King, Mahommed Allee Shah, did shoot the monkey, got a fever a few days after, and died of it, are facts well known at Lucknow.