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Esoof Khan, who were universally detested, thereby attaching to 
himself the foul stigma of this murder. The general discontent 
and sullen silence that pervaded the capital, soon spread through 
the empire: there seemed only wanting an enterprising spirit to 
stand forth and effect a revolution. This calm had not been of 
long duration, when two formidable enemies appeared in the 
highest female characters of the empire; the mother and the widow 
of Narrain Row, the decased peshwa. 
The name of the former was Gopicabhye, the widow* of Balla- 
jee Row, and mother of Mhadarow and Narrain Row; a woman, 
who, during her husband’s life, had great influence in the Mahratta 
court: at that time her character was not very correct, and after- 
wards she became extremely dissolute. Instead of immolating her- 
self on the funeral pyre of her husband, she preferred a longer 
abode among the sons of men, to indulge in the most licentious 
conduct: false, malicious, and tyrannical, her state intrigues were 
marked by cruelty and oppression, and, instead of a decent re- 
tirement, and chaste deportment, her widowhood was devoted to 
shameless levity. This woman was emphatically styled the scourge 
of her country: to an undue influence over her husband and her 
sons, the three succeeding peshwas, were imputed all the troubles 
which had for so many years disturbed the court of Poonah, 
especially in the distrust and imprisonment of Ragobah. Being 
now deprived of her only surviving son by means of the man she 
so much detested, she gave loose to the whole fury of her re- 
venge. 
Actuated by sentiments equally inimical to the new peshwa. 
