1 94 SECRET HISTORY OF THE LAHORE DURBAR.
2 ness and forwardness which the girl was said to exhibit, and
3 from her generally precocious character, Runjeet readily con-
4 sented to relieve Jewahir Mull of his charge, and the young lady
5 was brought to Lahore to enliven the night scenes in the
6 palace. Here she enacted a character almost similar to that
7 which her father had performed before her, that of a licensed
8 buffoon, her business being to put to shame all, both men and
9 women, who were in any degree less depraved or less shameless
10 than herself.
11 Numerous were the amours in which she was now engaged,
12 some with, others without the knowledge and consent of the
13 Maharajh. To give a detail of these affairs and of scenes acted
14 in the presence of the old Chief himself and at his instigation,
15 would be an outrage on common decency; suffice it then to
16 say, that Runjeet actually encouraged and forwarded the amours
17 of this woman, who passed as his wife, with a person known as
18 Gulloo Moskee — formerly a beestee of the palace, but latterly
19 an indulged favourite of the Maharajh — and that in nine or ten
20 months afterwards the present Maharajh Dulleep Sing was
21 born.
22 Though every one well knew, and none better than Runjeet
23 himself, the history of this child and its parentage, it is a curi-
24 ous fact that the Maharajh on this as on other similar occasions,
25 felt a pleasure in being considered at his age the father of a
26 new-born child. Nor did Gulloo, or the mother of the infant,
27 with others, scruple to congratulate the old man on the occasion,
28 as though he were really the father of the babe.
29 Such is the true history of Her Highness, Ranee Chunda,
30 up to the time when she presented to the Punjaub its future
31 sovereign, for whom at the time no such splendid destiny could
32 have been anticipated. The records of her life since that
33 period are a part of the chronicles of the country, and will
34 be found intertwined with the memoirs of its great men, and