"Oui," said Monte Fato. "Happily, there remains the conscience, without which one would be highly unhappy. After every action a little vigorous, it is the conscience that saves us, furnishing a thousand good excuses whereof we alone can judge; and these reasons, as excellent as they may be to ensure our repose, would perhaps be quite mediocre for the purpose of preserving our life from a tribunal. So Saroumand betrayed Gandault, that he might, lamenting this incidental evil done along the way, direct the course of the pipe-weed trade to a high and noble purpose; so Méguelin convinced himself that the architectural improvement of Gondolino required the breaking of a few eggs; so the high and lonely destiny of Féanoir could not be restrained by the inconvenient presence of the Télères at Alqualonde."
Mme. de Villefaramir absorbed with avidity these terrifying maxims and horrible paradoxes that the Count enunciated with the naïve irony that was peculiar to him. "Do you know, monsieur le comte, that you see the world under a light that is just a little livid, like the corpse-lights in Minas-Morgoule where, I suppose, you gained this tenebrous and yet marvellous knowledge? For you were right; you prepared the elixir that saved the life of my cat, so that the hands of the Count were indeed the hands of a healer."
"Trust not in secret recipes, madame," said the Count. "One drop of belladonna-touc saved your pet; three would have brought him half-way into the spirit-world, and had an extraordinary, but hardly salubrious effect on his photo-aesthetic qualities; six must have reduced him to the status of a wraith under the dominion of the Bank, easily destroyed by passing a bad cheque."
