"Oh monsieur!" cried the baroness. "You are without mercy for others; others, then, will be without mercy for you."
"So be it!" said the steuard, raising his arm to heaven in a gesture of menace.
Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars rose pale and cold. "Adieu, monsieur," said she. "May your eyrie be crudely redecorated at your journey's end."
"Adieu, madame," replied Villefaramir, and almost joyfully accompanied her to the door.
From his window, which was round in the style of the hobbites, but adorned more than generously in gold and mithrile, with the intent of looking massive and Numénoréan, yet succeeding only in looking ugly, M. de Sacqueville-Danglars espied the vehicle of the Count of Monte Fato entering the courtyard, and he went out to meet him, looking sad, but affable.
"Eh bien, Count," he said, extending a hand to Monte Fato. "You are come to offer me your condolences. In verity, misfortune is upon my house, so that I almost wondered whether I had not earned this by wishing misfortune on the poor Pérégrins. Eh bien, on my word of honor, no; I had never wished Pérégrin any ill; he was perhaps a little arrogant for a hobbite who rose, like me, from nothing; but everyone has his faults, as Théoden of Rohan observed when the premier Vermelangue not only betrayed him, but also had an irritatingly bad White Hand motif painted all over the casinos of Edoras. The people of our generation are not happy this year: witness Villefaramir, losing his entire family in a very strange fashion; Pérégrin, dishonoured and slain; and me, covered with ridicule by the criminality of that Trascoletto, and then..."
