At the front door of the Palace was the King’s brother just getting off his elephant. He was a brown and yellow brother, withered and shrivelled like a very old apple, and dressed in a suite of plush of a bright orange, sown thick with emeralds. All the white marble terrace in front of the Palace was crowded with the retinue of the new arrival. Slaves of all colours—black, brown, yellow, and cream colour, dressed in all sorts of bright hues, scarlet and blue and purple and orange, with rubies and sapphires and amethysts and topazes sewn thickly on them, so that the eye could hardly bear the glow and glitter of them as they shone in the sunlight on the terrace.
“Welcome, welcome!” King Alban cried, and kissed his brother on both cheeks, as is the fashion in Albanatolia and in many other civilised lands. Then, still holding him by both hands, he led him into the Palace. The jewelled gorgeous retinue followed him in, and the head parlour-maid shut the front door and put the chain up, because she knew it to be more than possible that a few odd rubies and sapphires and things would drop off the retinue on to the floor, and she thought any such little odds and ends might as well go into her dust-pan, when she swept up after lunch, as into the pockets of any poor people who might look in during the afternoon to ask the King’s advice, as they were fond of doing. This was the beginning of the trouble that was wrought by the coming of the King’s brother. Before this every door stood unfastened all day long, because every one was contented, and therefore honest.
King Alban entertained his brother royally for seven days in the good old fashion, and then gave him a palace of his own to live in. The Palace was of white marble, like most of the buildings in Albanatolia, but the King’s brother had it painted red all over without a moment’s delay. And then he began to give parties and to have processions and to scatter money among the crowd, and every day the people loved him more. He was a loud, jolly, joking sort of man, with a black beard, and he always wore clothes of plush, a material hitherto unknown; and he always blazed with jewels, and he had a circus set up at his own expense in the field at the back of his Palace; and he introduced horse-racing and animated photographs—all highly coloured—and thus became extraordinarily popular: so much so that the people presently began to forget all the good that King Alban had done for them, and to wish secretly that the kingdom had happened to have a bright, cheerful king like Prince Negretti.
For King Alban had worked so hard for his people’s good that he had not had time to be amusing. He had never had processions and circuses, preferring rather small tea-parties with the Lord Chief Good-doer, the Commissioner of Public Health, and a few chosen spirits from the Education Department, and loving best of all to wander alone, dreaming, among the blossoming orchards or in the meadows beyond the river, where the white jonquils grew, or in the lanes between the pearly may-bushes, or in the terraced garden of his Palace, where the white roses hung in heavy-scented clusters, and the white peacocks spread their tails upon the marble balustrades. And wherever he went he thought of the people’s good, and devised new ways of making them comfortable. Everything was beautifully managed. Every one had enough to wear and enough to eat, and enough to do, which is very important; but they had not enough to play at, and this was what made them ready to lend long and discontented ears to the whispers of the King’s brother.
“WELCOME! WELCOME!”
Now Negretti was a Magician, and his was the black or coloured magic which won’t wash clothes. He was always messing about with acids and alkalis, and sulphites and bicarbonates, and retorts and furnaces, and test-tubes, and pestles and mortars, and the like; and whenever he happened to make a nice colour by mixing two or more of these things together, he always put it in a bottle and stuck it up in one of the Palace windows, so that at night his windows were brighter than any chemist’s and druggist’s in any street, and the people said it was as good as fireworks. The King’s palace windows only sent out a soft white light like moonlight, and this was now considered very tame.
It was the Magician’s habit to wander about the town stirring up discontent as easily as if it had been one of his chemical messes; and though he was so well known among the people he was never recognised, because he always took care to disguise himself as a respectable person, and the disguise was quite impenetrable. (I hope you know what that is?)
One night he sat disguised at the King’s Head—the finest of the municipal alehouses—drinking dog’s-nose out of a pewter-pot, and the grumbling of the people was music in his wicked ears.