"Oui," said the Count. "Unfortunately, my recipe, excellent as it is for an altogether exceptional man like myself, who am as nonpareil as the White Weed of Gondor, would be fort dangerous for an army, which would sleep when one had most need of her – as indeed happened when Saroumand took the Horne-bourg."
"May one know what this recipe is?" inquired De Brie, dipping his crêpe in brandy.
"Oh, mon Dieu, oui," said Monte Fato. « I make no secret of it: it's a mélange of excellent opium that the Balrogue in Morie was so kind as to proffer me (indeed his opium is even more select than his justly renowned coffee), combined with the best hashberry harvested in the East, c'est-à-dire in Minas-Morgoule, where the Fantômes have made an art of it. One joins these two together in a pill that produces the contentment of logs. I am never without these pills, lest I should want them, but not have them."
"Would it be indiscreet to ask to see this recipe more wondrous sans doute than the draughts of ents?" inquired Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, hoping to catch the stranger in a lie.
"Non, monsieur," replied the Count. He removed from his pocket a great pill of a clear green, set in a silver brooch that was wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outstretched wings. So great was its beauty and so ineffable the fragrance that wafted therefrom that Boyen-Xènes-Baguines was enchanted. "C'est cosmique!" he cried.
