When he was certain that no one could hear them, the steuard du roi said, "Merci, madame, for your exactitude." He offered her a seat, which Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars accepted, for her heart was beating so hard that she felt close to suffocating. He sat facing her. "Voilà, madame, long years numberless as swift draughts of cognac in salons beyond the Île-de-la-Cité that I have not had the happiness of speaking with you alone; and, to my great regret, we meet to open a conversation quite painful for both of us."
"Monsieur," said Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars. "You understand my emotion, do you not? Ménage me then, for this chamber where so many have passed guilty and shameful, this fauteuil on which I in turn sit shameful and trembling ...! I need all my reason to convince myself not to see in me a guilty woman and in you a menacing judge, as when Thingolaud accused Luthienne of prostituting herself to mortals for cheap absinthe!"
"And I," replied Villefaramir, "I reply that I see myself not in the fauteuil of the judge but in that of the accused."
"You?"
"Yes, I. How has it revived, this terrible past? How, from the tomb and from the depths of our hearts where it lay dormant, has it arisen like a caffeinated Balrogue to cause us to blush with shame and impallidish with dread?"
