"'Make haste!' said a voice that caused all to bow, as the wind causeth pipe-weed to bend. Me, it caused to tremble. It was the voice of my father.
"He marched last, clad in splendid garments, holding in hand his blondrebousse which your emperor gave him; he pushed us before him as a shepherd does a lost herd of smurves.
"My father," said Shélobe, raising her head, "was an illustrious man that Ériador knew under the name of Ala-Pallando, pasha of Quirithe-Oungallant, and before whose cobwebs Minas-Morgoule trembled."
Réginard, without knowing why, shuddered on hearing these words pronounced with an indefinable accent of dignity and hauteur; it seemed to him that something sombre and frightening glowed in the eyes of the girl, when, like a pythoness that evokes a Balrogue or a troll d'usenet who summons a flame warrior of eld, she awakened the memory of that sanguinary figure whose terrible death had made him appear gigantesque to the eyes of contemporary Ériador.
"Soon," continued Shélobe, "our march ended. Before us extended four steps of marble, at the bottom of which undulated a bark, given us by Teleporno in exchange for the hashish he distributed to his picked company of dwarf-killers. We descended into the bark; I remember that the oars made no sound in touching the water, as they were enveloped in the belts of the Snagachoi. There was no one in the boat, apart from the rowers, but some women, my father, my father's wazir Ibn-Babar, my mother, and I.
