THE CAPITALS OF AKBAR 33

the City of Victory that even now, deserted, speaks of
the great emperor who could plan magnificent edifices,
just as well as he could control the mightiest of beasts,
the elephant.

From the imposing red fort of Akbar's last capital,
Agra, his grandson, Shah Jehan, gazed across the hot,
dry plains to the marble mausoleum 'that he had built
to the memory of the Mumtaz that he loved. A broken
disappointed emperor, a prisoner of his ownson^AuraDzeb,
in the very fort from which he had ruled his vast
domains, Shah Jehan bowed his aged forehead towards
the west—towards Mecca—to the red sunsets that
heralded his end and heralded, too, the sunset of the
Mughal Empire.

Exquisite as it is now, so it was when the sad
emperor gazed upon the beauty of the marble beneath
which, in eternal peace, rested the one he had loved so
much, The Ornament of the Palace, Mumtaz MuhaL
By a Persian poet was the dirge so poignantly suited
to the soliloquies of Shah Jehan: <( It was at this
fountain that she drank, she is dead but the fountain
flows on; it was of this honey that she tasted, she is
dead but the honey is still sweet; on this rose her head
she sank, she is dead but the rose tree grows on; my
heart she had taken in her hands, she is dead and my
heart in her tomb lies."

In Agra, the one-time capital of Akbar, Mumfcaz
and Shah Jehan lie side by side in this fairest of
tombs, the marble Taj-