began their scamper with such a
quantity of precautions that the King was astonished.

[Illustration: Mrs. Mouse was embroidering
a beautiful smoking cap for her husband]

In front of them went a regiment of ferocious mice, soldiers
whose bayonets made of fine needles gleamed in the darkness.
Behind them came a second regiment, also armed to the teeth.

Perez the Mouse then confessed that he would not have undertaken
this expedition without these soldiers to protect the person of
the young monarch.

All of a sudden King Bubi saw the guard in front had disappeared
down a little hole, through which came a faint light.

[Illustration: Adolphus playing cards at the Jockey Club]

This was the moment of danger. Perez the Mouse, slowly waggling
his tail from side to side, put his head very cautiously through
the hole and looked around; he then went back two steps, and
finally, suddenly seizing the King's paw, dashed through the
hole like an arrow, crossed a big kitchen, and disappeared
through another hole on the opposite side near the range. As one
sees telegraph posts out of the train so Bubi saw that kitchen.
By the hearth, in the glow of the fire, lay an enormous cat, the
dreadful Don Pedro, its great whiskers heaving up and down as it
breathed.

The guards silently formed up, from hole to hole, ready to fire,
to protect the King's route from the sleeping cat. It was all
very grand and imposing. An ugly old woman sat in a chair, also
asleep, with her knitting on her knee.

Once through the hole the danger was over, and they had only to
get upstairs, as this was where little Giles lived. Everything
was open in his poor room, which was all cracks and draughts.

King Bubi scrambled on to the arm of a seatless chair, the only
one in the room, and from there could see a picture of poverty
such as he had never dreamt of.

The sloping roof joined the floor, so that on one side a man
could not have stood upright, and through the holes the cold air
of dawn was coming, while icicles hung from the roof. The only
furniture besides the chair was an empty bread basket hanging
up, and in a corner a bed of straw and rags, on which little
Giles and his mother were lying fast asleep.

Perez the Mouse drew nearer, taking the King by the paw, and
they could see how little Giles was huddled up in the rags, and
how he was cuddled up against his mother for warmth, and it made
the King so unhappy that he began to cry.