CRUELTY OF THE LATE SHAH. 
525 
his most lenient sentences. One morning, some of the royal 
goolams having just returned from a domiciliary visit of this kind 
to an unfortunate village under the ban of the king, and its doom 
having been to lose a certain number of eyes extracted from 
the heads of its inhabitants, the people in attendance produced 
the fatal bag, and the sightless organs of vision were poured out 
before his majesty. Scrupulous in the execution of his orders, 
the Shah instantly began with the point of his canjar deliberately 
separating them one by one, to ascertain if his sentence had 
been punctually obeyed. Mirza Sheffy, his faithful minister? 
who had long regarded his master’s repeated acts of violence 
and cruelty with secret horror, now hoping to make some im¬ 
pression on his conscience, seizing the opportunity, suddenly 
said: “ Does not your majesty think it possible, that God may 
one day not be pleased with this ?” 
The king slowly raised his head, carefully keeping his dagger 
between the filmy heaps in the order he was counting them, 
and as solemnly replied, — “ Sir, by my head, if there should be 
one eye too few here, I myself will make the number up with 
yours.” 
The rash philanthropist awaited in shuddering silence his fate, 
well knowing that the word of his master was irrevocable ; but 
happily for him, the sentence had been too scrupulously exe¬ 
cuted, to call for the forfeit of his compassion, and he even 
remained in favour. After the demise of the tyrant, he still con¬ 
tinued in security and honour the first minister of state; and 
when he died, he bequeathed a prodigious property, amounting 
to two millions sterling, to the royal treasury. The various 
fountains of such wealth, I need not describe here, having un¬ 
folded their sources in a former page ; but the subject can never 
