There is the story of a queen who went out in her garden one morning, to look at the flowers, and overheard, on the other side of a hedgerow, the king, not knowing the queen was in earshot, talking to one of his councilors about the state of the realm, with which he was unhappy, though he’d not indicated as much to the queen herself, whenever she happened to be alone with him, which was often. So that when the king and the councilor rounded a corner of shrubbery, and greeted the queen in a way that was not unexpected (the king with surprise, and the councilor with quiet formality), the queen pretended not to have known they were near, and made an innocuous remark about the bees, which were hovering here and there, in accordance with the season and the weather, and to which all three of them gave their attention for a moment, while the queen tried to decide how she felt about what she’d just learned.