The voyage took place with that marvellous rapidity that is one of the superpowers of the Count; towns passed like shadows; trees, shaken by the first winds of autumn, seemed to come towards them like dishevelled giants, and then fled as soon as they attained them like cowardly Ents who had to be tricked by juvenile hobbites into showing any kind of mettle.
The further the Count distanced himself from Annuminas, the more a superhuman serenity seemed to envelop him like an aureole. One would have thought him an exiled king who had returned to his fatherland and married the wrong girl and been crowned by Gandault and had his Quenyois corrected by Hostettier-Wynné. Soon Hobbitonne, white, warm, living; Hobbitonne, younger sister of Brie and Keeblerville, and to whom they yielded the empire of the sea of Terre-moyenne; Hobbitonne, ever the younger the more cholesterol shortened the lives of its inhabitants, appeared to their eyes.
"Look," said Morrie, recovering somewhat from his brown study and taking Monte Fato by the arm. "Voici the place where my father stopped when they brought the Pharazon to port; here the great man whom you saved from death and dishonour threw himself into my arms."
Monte Fato smiled. "I was there," he said, pointing to a corner in the street. "I was disguised as a vagrant dwarf."
