The monkey’s life depended on Tiphaine’s. Royal favourites are seldom popular in court circles. The monkey had amusing tricks but dirty habits; few would put in a good word for it when Tiphaine’s death plunged the court in sorrow. Nothing at all could be pled for Morel and Amanita, Tiphaine’s latest importees from the mortal world. Strictly speaking, they were not changelings, for they had been bought with good fairy gold. This in itself was against them; but, however got, they would have been detested. They were twins, and orphans; their parents had been burned as heretics during the Easter festivities in Madrid, and the Brocéliande ambassador, on his way back from the Kingdom of the Gaudarramas, had stolen them from the convent of penitents to which they had been assigned. Tiphaine had bought them from him. For a while she was devoted to them—as devoted as she had been to the still remembered changeling Tiffany, who for thirteen years she had kept as her lover. Tiffany, in his mortal way, was tolerable. Morel and Amanita were intolerable from the start. They thieved, destroyed, laid booby traps, mimicked, fought each other like wildcats, infuriated the servants and tore out the Chief Harpist’s hair. (Custom dictated that it be worn long and flowing as in olden days.)

Spring-cleanings have a peculiar fascination for those employed in them. A mysterious pair of spectacles is found in a sauceboat; a rusty strongbox in the muniment room is forced open and contains nutmegs; rolls of green baize and a painting of Vesuvius in Eruption are brought to light from the beer-cellar; when the brown bed-hangings from the Librarian’s bed-chamber are hung on the line and the dust beaten out of them, they are discovered to be cloth-of-gold and fall to pieces. A pioneering spirit reigns. Unheard-of feats of cleaning are achieved; hinges are polished, statuary scoured into its remotest crevices, bookcases scaled like mountain peaks, folios waxed and camphor bags renewed on the topmost shelves. In this triumphing flood of industry the great Venetian-glass chandelier that hung from the height of the throne-room ceiling had somehow or other escaped attention till the house-keeper saw a page doing nothing, put a feather whisk in his hand, and told him to fly up and dust it. He hovered enthralled by the blue glass leaves and pink glass roses in their embowering crystal, and was only vaguely aware of a dark mass of cobwebs at its centre. Poking with his whisk, he dislodged Sir Glamie—and dropped to the floor in a dead faint.