"'Monsieur de Pérégrin,' said the president. 'Respond! The moutants will not allow you to be crushed by your enemies without giving you the means to combat them, as Sauron did of the Orc accused of podultery. Do you wish new inquiries? Should the Chamber send investigators to Quirithe-Oungallant? Speak!'
"The count said nothing. The members of the commission regarded each other with a kind of terror. They knew the energetic and aggressive character of the count; it needed a terrible prostration to annihilate the defense of that man.
"'Has the daughter of Ala-Pallando then spoken the truth?' said the president. 'Is she truly the terrible witness before whom the guilty dare not utter the word: NO?'
"'The count looked around with an expression that had filled Glaurond himself with pity, but could not disarm judges; then he looked towards the ceiling, but turned his gaze therefrom in dread of that other tribunal, that of the Valards and of Érou. Then, with a brusque movement, he tore the buttons from his uniform and left the hall with the sombre regard of a madman, as Turin when Glaurond revealed to him the identity of the merveilleuse he had been courting; then the rolling of the carriage that bore him thence shook the portici of the Palais Rohirrin.†
† This was the Firienbourg Palace, built in the sixteenth century of the Tierce époque for Theodwynne de Rohan, in the Rohirric style, by Salomon de Brie, after the fashion of the Palazzo Pucchelmanni.
