Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 25.9.1

25.9.1

A few days before our writing these lines, there came from Bengal to Azim-abad a venerable gentleman, with a flowing white beard. He was a Persian-born, and a stranger. The day of his arrival, after having fatigued himself in setting his little things in his new lodgings, he was suddenly taken ill, and died about midnight. At day-break the officers of the Foudjdary-office rushed headlong into his lodgings, with an intention to take possession of his effects. He had four small children, all motherless. The poor fellows waking suddenly at the noise, and seeing their father motionless, and so many strange faces in the house, took fright, and clinging as close as they could to the dead body, as if for protection, they fell a-weeping and a-trembling. The man's servant waking at last, and being at once overwhelmed by a number of questions and by the threats of those oppressors, wanted to part the children from the corpse; and these auguring nothing but ill from that violence, fell a-screaming all together with all their might, so as to fill the whole quarter with an uproar, which people compared to that of the Day of Judgment. Radja Hyaliram came to hear of this matter; but his chairmen not being at hand, he ran on foot out of his house; and going into the lodging in question, he exerted himself in soothing and pacifying the affrighted children.