The shirrifes arrive; a physician is summoned, and conducts a post-mortem; the sunni-délit is discovered; the grocers testify to having sold the sunni-délit to monsieur; and the stupid criminal is caught, interrogated, confounded, condemned, and guillotined. Voilà how you hobbites understand chemingole, madame."
"Oh, what do you expect, monsieur!" said the young woman, laughing. "Not everyone can be an Elrond or an Ungolianne, or knows the lost recipe for touinquies, by which the exact day and hour of death could be foretold as surely as the rising of the phaeton of Arienne at dawn."
"Oh mon Érou, madame," said the Count. "Is any art ever lost! The arts are displaced or take turns in lighting the fashionable world with their éclat, just as did the Two Cheeses in the day before days; things change their names, voilà tout; but the poison always has the same result, particularly when aided by physicians, who are generally as little at ease with chemingole, as Sharcoléon in a boat. And behold a man killed by art, that no human justice may discover, save if possessed of the palantirs that were lost in the Flame Wars that preceded the ascension of the Telbourbons."
"How terrifying, and yet how admirable! Then the poisons of the Elronds, the Balroggieri, even the Brandiboucques..."
