"Monsieur le steuard du roi is warned, by a friend of the throne and the Valards, that the hobbite named Samouard Gamgès, first mate of the vessel Pharazon, who arrived this morning from Rivendeau by way of Brie, has been charged by Trasque with a letter for the usurper, and, by the usurper, with a letter for the Sharcoléonist faction of Annuminas. The traitor is a stout little fellow with a cleft in his chin: a perky bonhobbite with a bright eye.
"You will find the proof of his crime in arresting him; for you will find this letter either on him, or on his father, or in his cabin on board the Pharazon."
"The result of this letter, as you know, madame, was my arrest," continued the Count. "But what you could not know is how long my imprisonment endured. I remained a quarter of a league from you in the Château de Locqueholles for fourteen years, the period, I note, wherein Trolquien composed the Sketches on the Amours of the Elves and Ents, or a Fanguirle's Delight. Every day of those fourteen years, I renewed my oath of vengeance, and yet I did not know that Pippand had married you nor that my father had died of hunger!"
"The Eagles! The Eagles!" cried Rosédès.
"So, on leaving prison, my days though less dark were no less laborious. I swore on my dead father and on the living Rosédès to be avenged on Pippand, and... I am avenged. What the hobbites and Ala-Pallando and the captains of the West, betrayed by him, could not accomplish, that I have achieved."
