Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/124

94 ALA -AD -DIN KHALJI polite. This was the youth who suddenly found himself absolute master of all that the most luxurious city of India, all that India itself, could offer to youth and desire. The result may be left to the imagination. In less than three years he had drunk and debauched him- self into a paralytic; and when a ruffian was sent to murder him, he found him in the chamber of mirrors in his lovely palace at Kilughari on the Jumna, lying THE RIVER JTTMNA AT MATHURA. at his last gasp, and then and there literally kicked him out of this world. His father had come from Bengal to try and save him, though he himself was not of a didactic nature; but he found him amiable and hopeless, utterly under the spell of a clever vizir, Mzam-ad-din, who encouraged the fool in his folly in the hope of succeeding to the throne. But Nizam-ad-din overreached himself. The crippling of the kingdom was more serious than the