But what a wonderful machine had been here revealed to his gaze--manipulated without a word, marshaled by signs, and composed entirely of strangers! And to think that all this insect-like marvel of industry, so expeditious, and done on so huge a scale, had been going on daily under his own roof, and he had known nothing of it! So this was how his palace was cleaned for him, and why it never showed a sign of wear or the marks of muddy boots? Yet never before had any thought on the matter occurred to him. And what if some fine day those insects, fired by revolutionary zeal, had taken it to heart to rise up in their dozens by those escalading ladders to the first story and rush the private apartments, and murder him in his morning bath or in his bed! What a surprising and unexplained apparition it would have been! But now, and for the future, he would know that daily about this time a large ant-like colony was running about under him, very strong of arm, very active of leg; and what protection, he wondered, from peril of sudden inroad was that search under his bed on the ninth day of every November? Did that really meet and counter modern methods of conspiracy and assassination, or the growing dangers of labor unrest? He very much doubted it. And so, with his head very full of the wonder, the order, and the underlying disturbance of it all, he passed on to his own inner chamber, and had now something to tell the Queen as to how their immediate domestic affairs were conducted which should entirely put aside all awkward questions as to what he had been doing the evening before and where he had spent the night. But, as a matter of fact, sleek officialdom had sheltered the Queen from all anxiety, and she had not a notion that the King had been anywhere except to some consultation with ministers, and thence late to bed. In order that his valet might find him there he got into it, and when, a couple of hours later, he greeted her Majesty he found that sanguine mind looking eagerly ahead and concerning itself very little over things which were past. "Remember, my dear," she said, looking up from her letters, "that in three days' time the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser comes. I do hope, while he is here, that you will be fairly free." "Not so free as I thought I should be," said the King, and he sighed heavily. III His Majesty had a good many things that day to discuss with the Prime Minister when at a later hour they met. He began on the matter which was most regular and formal; had he been at all likely to forget it the Queen's observation would have reminded him.