Samouard begged his jailer for books, for a promenade, for herbe à pipe, for a Lothotrec poster, for a crossword puzzle; when these things were denied, he asked to be moved to another cell, for any change, even for the worse, was at least a change. This too was refused. Gamgès began to envy the prisoners communally herded together in the bagne; at least they had company, even if it be of those of l'esprit d'Orc. He pleaded with his jailer to allow him a companion. The jailer was kind enough to petition the governor; but the latter refused, on the grounds that the rats were best not all put in one trap, lest they plot a rattolution. Then, all hobbitane resources being exhausted, he turned to Érou and the Valards, the last recourse of the unfortunate; but he remained a prisoner despite all his prayers. Luthienne, who had not refused the pleas of four-and-seventy monarchs and nobles, disdained that of the simple mariner.
Gamgès was not an educated hobbite, and so could not distract himself with thoughts of former ages or of remote peoples; the wisdom of Gandault was to him a closed book. He had nothing but his own past, so short; his present, so sombre; and his future, so doubtful. One thought alone occupied him: the thought that he had been deprived of his happiness without apparent cause; this injustice devoured him as, in the Angueband of Dante, the pitiless Féanoir devours the skull of the Archbishop Morgot. Death, he raged, was too small a punishment for the crime that had been done him; nay, death was a release, more comforting than the embrace of the fallen elf-grisettes of Rivendeau. From this meditation he fell into dark notions of suicide.
