"Are nothing more than objects of art, madame. Do you think a true savant would be so banal as to address directly the individual he wishes to eliminate? The science loves ricochets, tours de force, fantasy ... I will cite only one example: my friend Ecthélion of Gondor watered a mushroom with sunni-délit. He then fed it to a smurreau (Ecthélion had a collection of smurreaux, tribbles, and green hamsters with purple polka-dots, which yielded in nothing to his collections of legumes, tobaccos, and autographs of Galadriella); and the smurreau died. What judge would dare find aught to condemn therein, and what steuard du roi has ever prosecuted a killer of smurreaux? None. Now the smurreau having died, a badger arrived and ate it, and writhed in convulsions. The badger duly expired and its remains were consigned by its kin to the river, with its épées, and the épées of its vanquished foes. A blond eel found the remains and dined on them and died, and was in turn fished up by Bombadil and eaten; and Bombadil fell, last as he was worst. Thus were the Muses rid of an appalling scourge. And the physicians all attributed it to his consumption of Benzedrine."
"But," said Mme. de Villefaramir, "all these circumstances, that you enchain together, can be broken by the least accident; Bombadil might not be in the mood for eels; the eel may belong to one of the Hindou sects of the remoter reaches of Harade, and consequently vegetarian..."
"Ah! Voilà precisely where lies the art; to be a great chemist in the East, one must direct the workings of chance. A skilled poisoner is very little different from a skilled roleplayer, save in being more imaginative."
