Walter Bagehot's edict that daylight should never shine on the magic of royalty is back in vogue. Not that much lustre attaches to an institution now darkened by a scandal of which we should not know. Officially, we have been told only that one subject of the rumour is Michael Fawcett, former toothpaste-squeezer to the Prince of Wales, and that the other is the prince himself. Maybe, by today, the full details of the mystery that dare not speak its name will have seeped from foreign newspapers into the British press. Disclosure was inevitable from the moment Mr Justice Tugendhat, a judge less in favour than some colleagues of Bagehotian news blackouts, ruled that Mr Fawcett could be named as the obtainer of a draconian gagging order.  Soon afterwards, Clarence House acknowledged Charles's involvement, issuing a vehement denial, though of what it could not say. The prince's men were gambling that this factual short-circuitry might appeal to people who long for a prelapsarian age of royalty and for butlers who, like Jeeves, shimmer about with trays of beverages rather than serving up necro-gossip from beyond Diana's grave. The courtiers were almost right.  The rumours do not sound compelling. Their source, another ex-toiler for the prince, is supposedly an alcoholic and a fantasist. Even readers who object to Charles using the media as a megaphone for his barmier causes recoil at how royal life has become Big Brother for the ermine set. Like any citizen, Charles is entitled to defend himself against being traduced. The usual means were at his disposal, and at Mr Fawcett's.  They could have let the story run and denounced it as poisonous fabrication. If that was not enough, a libel jury would have settled the matter. The first recourse might have sufficed, since the public does not enjoy crucifying the royals half as much as newspapers suppose. Nor are people stupid. They know that monarchs, from Aethelred the Redeless to Henry VIII, have behaved in ways that make today's royal family look like the Townswomen's Guild.  Last week's Channel 4 documentary on the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Kent, portrayed him as a hard-drinking, drug-using bisexual once chased by the police as he and his lover, Nol Coward, clattered down a London street in stilettoes. The Clarence House gossip, modest in comparison, is tabloid ectoplasm, swelled and shaped partly by the bungling of a household already suspected of furtiveness.  Considering how much practice they have had, the Windsors are hopeless at defusing scandal. Some months ago, entirely separate allegations of the cover-up of a homosexual rape by another palace servant and the sale of official gifts prompted Charles to launch an inquiry, conducted by his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat. Though cleared of financial impropriety, 'Fawcett the Fence' had to go. He left with generous severance pay, retained his 450,000 grace-and-favour home and earns a reported 100,000 a year for freelance services to Charles.  Mr Fawcett is again central to a furore, this time billed as the one that could break the monarchy. If that forecast is right, and it seems unlikely, then a British republic will spring not from grotesque rumour but from its heavy-handed suppression.  Royalty's evolving relationship with the law has often centred on canine matters. Queen Victoria sued to stop a publisher selling etchings of her dogs, and Princess Anne was fined for failing to prevent hers from biting a passer-by. On a less corgified note, Queen Anne refused royal assent to a 1707 Bill settling the militia in Scotland.   Three centuries on, the trials of two royal butlers collapsed after it emerged that the Queen, constitutionally the fount of justice, had known of Paul Burrell's stash of Diana's possessions but had not thought to mention it earlier. The resulting questions are so far unaddressed by the Law Lords. Although it seems probable that Her Majesty is competent to appear as a witness in a criminal case, the question of whether she is compellable is less sure. The Director of Public Prosecutions said last week that he could 'give no authoritative answer'.  Mr Fawcett was spared such legal vagueness. On learning that the Mail on Sunday was about to publish its bombshell, he speedily obtained from Mr Justice McKinnon an injunction that is hardly ever granted. How delighted the makers of Thalidomide, or the late Robert Maxwell, might have been if offered similar prior restraint.  To smash the precept that newspapers should publish and be damned would usher in the censorship of the police state. Yet when the Guardian proposed to name Mr Fawcett simply as the obtainer of this super-ban, Mr Justice Henriques handed out another gagging order over his mobile phone while stuck in traffic. The inescapable presumption of wig-doffing to royalty, unfortunate in the week when the Lord Chief Justice warned that the judiciary's sacred independence is under threat, has not even done Charles a favour.  First, he wants suppression, then pre-emptive denial. What, the courts may wonder, is his game? I doubt, having met him, that he really knows. To see him as dissolute or disreputable would be ludicrous. In many ways a rather tragic man, he affects despair that his worthwhile social policy work is overshadowed by carping. He cannot, or perhaps dare not, understand why he is so undermined.  The media tacitly decided, long ago, that Charles-baiting was the last legitimate national bloodsport. His faithlessness to the beloved Diana made him a target for high-minded moralisers of the popular media. That unfairness was made worse by the fact that the prince is unsuited, by behaviour and by temperament, to living under a tabloid fatwa. His combination of petulance and autocracy may have prompted the latest, panicked reaction.  Had he been wise, he would have faced down this rumour at the start. He could have gained public sympathy by pointing out how powerless even the privileged can be when newspapers discard human values and gossip is the wisdom of the age.  But even if the story were true, so what? Monarchists love the royals despite their venal ways, and republicans can think of worse failings than unprintable but legal indiscretions.  The Prince of Wales has shown, once again, that he simply does not get the dangers facing him, or understand the nation he hopes to lead. Britons are accommodating. They tolerate a kleptocratic monarchy that has never understood what treasures belong to it and which are ours. People have accepted, or revered in Diana's case, a princess who thinks she is Mother Teresa in Versace, an heir to the throne who thinks he is a Tampax and a mistress who thinks, maybe, she could one day be a queen.  The House of Windsor is almost scandal-proof. No flaky gossip-broker will directly bring it down. But the paying public does demand some openness. It does not want the fingerprints of a future head of state on the pillars of the constitution. If the Windsors, or their minions, give the impression that the law is at their personal disposal, Charles really might be staring at oblivion.  <BR>