They passed down two passages, and finally reached a large ice-grotto, with a row of windows opening on to a wide crevasse.
The room was filled with a flickering green light that yet rendered everything distinctly visible.
On a carved maple chair on the top of a dais sat the Goat-King—a snow-white Goat with mauve eyes and beard; completely surrounded with cuckoo clocks, and festoons of yellow wood table-napkin rings, and paper-cutters. The walls seemed to be covered with them, and the pendulums of the clocks were swinging in every direction.
"The King thinks it right to patronize native art," said the Goat-Queen, who with three of the Princesses had come forward graciously to welcome the visitors.
"I find the striking rather trying at times, especially as they don't all do it at once, and sometimes one cuckoo hasn't finished ten before the others are at twelve again."
"I wish all the works would go wrong!" muttered one of the Princesses crossly. "An ice-cavern full of cuckoo clocks is a poor fate for one of the Royal Family!"
"We must encourage industries," said the Queen. "It is a duty of our position. I should rather the industries were noiseless, but we can't choose."
"Bead necklaces and Venetian glass would have been more suitable," said the Princess, who had been very well educated, "or even brass-work and embroidered table-cloths. We might have draped the cavern with them."
At this moment there was a violent whirring amongst the clocks; doors flew open in all directions, and cuckoos of every size and description darted out, shook themselves violently, and the air was filled with such a deafening noise that the Goat-mother threw her apron over her head, and the Goat-children buried their ears in her skirts, and clung round her in terror.
"Merely four o'clock; nothing to make such a fuss about," said the Goat-King. "And now, when we can hear ourselves speak, you shall tell me what you have come for."