would upset them."

"Try!" laughingly advised the Takur. "In this state of religious trance
it is easier to break a man to pieces than to remove him from his
place."

To touch an ascetic in the state of trance is a sacrilege in the eyes of
the Hindus; but evidently the Takur was well aware that, under certain
circumstances, there may be exceptions to every Brahmanical rule. He
had another aside with the chief Brahman, who followed us, darker than a
thundercloud; the consultation did not last long, and after it was
over Gulab-Sing declared to us that none of us was allowed to touch the
fakirs, but that he personally had obtained this permission, and so was
going to show us something still more astonishing.

He approached the fakir on the little stone, and, carefully holding him
by his protruding ribs, he lifted him and put him on the ground. The
ascetic remained as statuesque as before. Then Gulab-Sing took the stone
in his hands and showed it to us, asking us, however, not to touch it
for fear of offending the crowd. The stone was round, flattish, with
rather an uneven surface. When laid on the ground it shook at the least
touch.

"Now, you see that this pedestal is far from being steady. And also you
have seen that, under the weight of the fakir, it is as immovable as if
it were planted in the ground."

When the fakir was put back on the stone, he and it at once resumed
their appearance, as of one single body, solidly joined to the ground,
and not a line of the fakir's body had changed. By all appearance, his
bending body and his head thrown backward sought to bring him down; but
for this fakir there was evidently no such thing as the law of gravity.

What I have described is a fact, but I do not take upon myself to
explain it. At the gates of the pagoda we found our shoes, which we had
been told to take off before going in. We put them on again, and left
this "holy of holies" of the secular mysteries, with our minds still
more perplexed than before. In the Fakirs' Avenue we found Narayan,
Mulji and the Babu, who were waiting for us. The chief Brahman would
not hear of their entering the pagoda. All the three had long before
released themselves from the iron claws of caste; they openly ate
and drank with us, and for this offence they were regarded as
excommunicated, and despised by their compatriots much more than the
Europeans themselves. Their presence in the pagoda would have polluted
it for ever, whereas th