"We are not come to exchange hypocritical courtesies or false semblances of friendship," said Réginard through gritted teeth, "but to demand an explanation. You extend your hand to me, and I perceive only a finger of the claw of Mordor."
"At the Opéra?" replied the Count with the voice so calm and reasonable, awakening in all listeners the desire by swift agreement to seem wise and reasonable and au courant themselves, and the Eye so penetrating that one recognises in that man eternally sure of himself and of his Ring. "Unfamiliar though I be with Annuminasian customs, I did not think it was there that explanations were sought."
"Nonetheless, if people hide, and make themselves invisible under the pretext of being in the bath, or at dinner, or indisposed, or of having sold their palais to Sacqueville-Danglars, then one must address them where one finds them."
"Yet, you were with me only yesterday, if my memory deceives me not," said Monte Fato.
"Yesterday, I was with you because I did not know who you were," replied the young hobbite, raising his voice to the extent that Mme. Goldeberrie interrupted her affair with a badger to take a peek into the Count's loge. "You are a cruel one, monsieur le comte. Beneath your superficial grace and urbanity, you have all the tender kindness of a crocodile who is malade d'amour – although, on the whole, I prefer the crocodile, even when inebriated with absinthe. For you are grown wise and cruel."
