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272 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 Com-