"I find mallorne exceedingly tasteless," said De Brie. "Monsieur may say what he pleases; but Lottaloria is a strange place, and its nobility are even more strange."
"And monsieur may say what he pleases, about that which he understands even less than politics or tobacco," said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. "Mallorne makes an exquisite material for pipes, and is so rare as to be almost impossible to find."
"En tout cas," continued the Viscount, "if you have read The Thousand and One Pipe-weeds, you will recognize the Count as being veritably a character thereof sprung to life; he even styles himself Éarendeau le marin and keeps a subterranean court worthy of an Al-Viggo. But chut! Do not say a word about that in front of him. Arafrantz entered his cavern blindfold, and was served by mute fish-eating gangrels and by women – although he wasn't quite sure of the women, since they didn't enter until after he had partaken of hashberry; so that he might have taken for women quite simply a quadrille of lamp-posts."
But the Viscount did not convince his audience. They all, to a man or fox, gave him a look that clearly meant: "No doubt you'll tell us that Trolquien wrote a mythology for Escargot, or that Balrogues wear cravats."
