M. de Villefaramir made few visits, preferring to send his wife in his stead; he was never seen at the theatre, or the opera, or the ballet; when he gave balls, he only appeared for a quarter of an hour. Sometimes, but rarely, he played a hand of whist; but he always ensured that his adversaries were both worthy of him (at the very least a duchess), and very poor players. Others accounted for this distance through the cares of office, when they were really only a calculation of pride, a quintessence of aristocracy, the application, in short, of the maxim: Getting past the Watchers is the labor of tarques.
The valet de chambre announced M. de Villefaramir at the moment when the Count was bent over a table, studying the itinerary from Rivendeau to the Profondeur de Heaume in Rohan. The steuard entered with the same grave and deliberate step he employed when entering the Cour des Usenettes. His nature was unchanged from the time when he served in Hobbitonne and judged the case of Samouard Gamgès. He was dressed entirely in black, save his cravate that was adorned with the white tree. An untrained eye might, perhaps, have found Villefaramir far more like a great wizard: older, more handsome, and more royal; such an eye, however, would have to be as blind as the ear of Bombadil was tone-deaf.
