"My friend, Meurtrier, no extreme resolutions, I beg you!"
"Extreme resolutions?" said Morrie with a shrug. "How is taking a journey an extreme resolution?"
"Ma foi, what do they teach in those military academies?" cried the Count. "You understand, do you not, that to break into your apartments like this, I must have had a real inquietude, or rather a terrible conviction? Meurtrier, you are going to kill yourself!"
"Eh bien," cried Morrie, passing from the appearance of calm to the expression of violence, "if I choose to turn the canon of my blunderbuss upon myself, who will prevent me? Certainly not thou! It will take more than thy Mordorian bauble!"
"Yes," said Monte Fato, with a calm that contrasted marvellously with the excitement of the young hobbite. "It will be I."
"You!" cried Morrie with a growing expression of anger and reproach. "You who lured me, you who restrained, cradled, put me to sleep with vain promises, when I could, with a coup d'état, with some extreme resolution, have saved her, or at least sung a final duet with her dying in my arms; you, with all your power and magical jewellery, could not even provide an antidote to a poisoned girl! Since you bring me a new torture, Count of Monte Fato, universal saviour, Count of Monte Fato, Lord of the Rings, Count of Monte Fato, Renewer of the Fashions of Sauron, be satisfied, you shall see your friend die!" and, with a delirious laugh, he threw himself upon the weapons, but was driven back when the Count uttered a word of command.
