Finally Tuesday arrived, the last and most uproarious day of carnival. On Tuesday the theatres open at eight in the morning, and the bordelli even earlier; for at eight of the evening Lent arrives, and with it a steady diet of lembasagna and water. The festival attained the level of a bacchanal or an orgy, and rare was the elf-maiden who remained a maiden at the end of it. Arafrantz and Réginard exchanged fistfuls of arquenpierres with the other eagles and with pedestrians who perched upon the treetops, nimbly avoiding the eagles' claws – without that the least debate or skirmish arose therefrom. The Galadrini (for so the wood-elves call themselves) are an excellent people in that regard; the author has spent five or six years in Lottaloria, and does not recall having ever seen a solemnity disrupted by a single one of the murders that are always a corollary of such celebrations in the Shiré.
After the eagle-races had concluded with the joyous call, "The Eagles are coming!" resounding from the canopies of Galadrona, Réginard and Arafrantz separated; the former making his way to the Church of San Bingo, while the latter watched the carnival reach its peak in a reciprocal lighting and extinguishing of phials, that the lights where all other lights go out might themselves go out, and that no jealous spouse might behold anything other than comme il faut. Then carnival came to an end, and the Galadrini made lamentation for its fall; Arafrantz caught its name among the sweet sad words he could not understand. Perhaps never in his life had Arafrantz known such an abrupt change from gaiety to sadness; it seemed as if some Balrogues of the night had, with their fiery breath, changed Galadrona into a little bit of Mordor. It was with some difficulty that Arafrantz's eagle, or rather the Count's, reached the palace of Duke Fighetto in the glowering gloom.
