The Conflagration
 

[ Pt. Ill
 

CHAPTER  X.
 

RANEE LAKSHMI BAI.
 

I
 

" Give up my Jhansi? I will not. Let him try to take who
dares!" Can you dare separate Lakshmi and her Kaustubha ?—
or the Ranee of the Jhansi and her jewel of Liberty ? Can you
leave the one and take the other? Neither the Asuras of the
earth, nor Death himself with all his tortures, have got the
strength to accomplish this! As long as there is a drop of
blood in the body of Lakshmi, so long you are powerless to
deprive her of her jewel of Liberty on this side death! And,
while the last drop of blood is oozing away from the heart
of this Lakshmi, while she will ride the burning flames with
her Kaustubha round her neck, and would make her fleeting
entry into the other World—ye sinners! you will be burned in
the leaping fire of those sacred flames ! How then can you separate
Lakshmi—the wealth of Jhansi—and her Kaustuba, her jewel?
Where Lakshmi is, Kaustubha must be. Kaustubha implies
Lakshmi.—You cannot, we again assert, leave the one and
take the other. Jhansi, its palaces, its Jaripatkas, its thrones,
and this Lakshmi of Jhansi with all her bride's jewels—would
live with her Kaustubha on the throne or die with it amidst
the flames !

" No; you cannot have my Jhansi. He who dares may try! ^
These were the words of this lightning of Jhansi and all over
Bundelkhand ran the deep and terrible premonitions of the
coming Revolutionary storm! Foaming waves of vengeance were
riding one over another from Sagar and Naogaon, Banda and
Banapur, Shahgarh and Karki—from all parts alike.   Lakshmi's

372
 

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