"You have a point, monsieur," said the Count. "Humans are a rather depressing study - although, fortunately, I have other business. But you just said that I have nothing to do. Do you, monsieur, think you have something to do? Or, to speak more clearly, do you think what you do is worth calling something to do?"
The astonishment of Villefaramir redoubled at this second coup so rudely fired by this strange adversary; and, from a social point of view, his retreat before the inexorable wit of Monte Fato was almost a rout. Then, like the Rohanois after they had seized the tobacco of Saroumand, he rallied. "Monsieur," he said, "you are a foreigner, and have, as you yourself have said, spent much of your life among orcs, balrogues, and other bêtes noires; you do not, then, know how justice, expeditious as a raging moumaque in barbarous lands, in Arnor is as prudent and methodical as an Ent who partakes of opium."
"Yes, indeed I do, monsieur. It is the ancient ticklium ulmo of the elves. It is especially of the justice of all lands of Terre-moyenne that I occupy myself, and I have compared the criminal procedures of all the speaking peoples; and I must say, monsieur, that it is the law of retaliation, or lekhs talyoniz, that I find most according to the Music of the Aînés that opened the opera of our existence."
