I thought it somewhat tasteless to house this particular group of servants alongside the zoo they tended, as if they were a part of it, but I supposed it was no stranger than the archaic European fashion of importing Nubian boys as decorative pages and footmen. Certainly, the small people seemed pleased enough with their lot, bustling officiously along the white paths and giving brisk orders to chuprassis twice their size. I tore my eyes from the shrunken village and joined the others at the lion cage.

I often think that caged predators are kept alive by their deep inner fantasies of ripping apart the two-legged creatures outside their bars. It would explain their habit of watching our movements from beneath half-lowered eyelids, as if tempting us to venture too near. These, no less than their brothers in Regent’s Park, seemed to be salivating at the proximity of their small attendants, and I had no doubt that they would be even happier to make a fuller meal should, say, a royal personage stray close. The maharaja, however, kept his distance, although he did take us into the building behind the cage so that we could look through thick, smeary windows at the great dun carnivores, lying in the shade two feet away. I could practically feel the heat rising off them; when one of the females stretched luxuriously and her claws scraped on the stone floor, more than one of us shivered.

The dogs were snuffling in the bushes behind the building, but the maharaja called them sharply back, and indeed, this white path ended at the door to the lion building. Instead, we retraced our steps into the central area, past the cages of hippopotamus and wart hog, finally going into a low stone building with pens behind it. The inside was light and, despite the smell of animals, well kept. The maharaja led us over to a small, glass-fronted cage built at chest height into one wall; I, being taller than most of them, had no problem in seeing what he was doing.

The cage contained a single slim, short-haired creature resembling a cross between a cat and a ferret, with clever hand-like paws and a wise-looking face. More of the creatures could be seen in the open-air pen attached to the outside of the building, many perched upright on their hind legs, watching their trapped comrade through the intervening glass with worried expressions. They were clearly perturbed, making quick forays in and out of their burrows, sitting up, chattering to one another. But the one inside was nearly frantic, for the maharaja had inserted his arm into the cage through a small trap-door, on his hand a glove-like puppet the shape and colour of a dove.