like, this great, bad, clever man? Had he got all the things he wanted,
which another ought to have had? And did he enjoy them?

"Nobody knows," answered the magpie, just as if she had been sitting
inside the prince's heart, instead of on the top of his shoulder. "He is
a king, and that's enough. For the rest nobody knows."

As she spoke, Mag flew down on to the palace roof, where the cloak
had rested, settling down between the great stacks of chimneys as
comfortably as if on the ground. She pecked at the tiles with her
beak--truly she was a wonderful bird--and immediately a little hole
opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the
chamber below.

"Now look in, my Prince. Make haste, for I must soon shut it up again."

But the boy hesitated. "Isn't it rude?--won't they think us intruding?"

"Oh, dear no! there's a hole like this in every palace; dozens of holes,
indeed. Everybody knows it, but nobody speaks of it. Intrusion! Why,
though the royal family are supposed to live shut up behind stone walls
ever so thick, all the world knows that they live in a glass house where
everybody can see them and throw a stone at them. Now pop down on your
knees, and take a peep at his Majesty."

His Majesty!

The Prince gazed eagerly down into a large room, the largest room he had
ever beheld, with furniture and hangings grander than anything he could
have ever imagined. A stray sunbeam, coming through a crevice of the