Bacq

Rosédès Cotolon, a charming and virginal young hobbit-maid from the Farthing-Midi with hair as black as the smoke from a Gauloise and large dark eyes like a gazelle or Sauron, was preparing mushrooms in her kitchen in Hobbitonne, when the fisherhobbite Pippand de Touc entered.

“Bonjour, mon ami,” she said, cheerfully, for the scent of the mushrooms had put her in an excellent mood.

“Rosédès,” murmured Pippand.  “Rosédès! Have you no reply to my professions of love?  O cease to torment me, and accept my hand, my heart, and my fish!  Or else tell me that my life and death mean nothing to you, that my happiness is but a game or a hobbite-piquenique in your eyes.”

“I have never encouraged your delusions; you cannot reproach me with a single coquetterie in your regard,” replied Rosédès.  “I love you as a brother; but another has my heart.  I would hardly make a decent wife for you, after all, if I loved another.”

“Samouard Gamgès!” growled Pippand, picking a mushroom from Rosédès’s pot and chewing on it menacingly.  “I will kill him.  I will boil him in water hot, a noble thing; never did fountain sound so sweet as the squeals of an enemy when water hot is poured over his head.”

“You will do no such thing, if you truly love me, Pippand,” said Rosédès.  “If he dies, I too will die; I will leap off the parapet of the Western Tower like Ninielle at the death of Turin.  No, Pippand, you will content yourself with my friendship and you will not follow your evil thoughts.”

“Like Ninielle?  I thought it was I you loved as a brother,” retorted Pippand, popping another mushroom.  “And what assures you that he has not departed for ever?  He has been away on the Pharazon with Captain Trasque for several months.”

“He will return,” said Rosédès.  “I have faith.”

Pippand said nothing, but turned bright red and choked – whether on his rage or the mushroom was hard to tell.  Just at that moment, there was a knock at the door.

“Rosédès!” came a voice that seemed about to explode with utter, orgasmic joy.  

“Samouard!” cried Rosédès, leaping to her feet and rushing to open the door to her modest but chaste and pure dwelling.  She and Samouard ran into each other’s arms and embraced each other so tenderly yet passionately that their two souls were as one, even as a Silmaril cannot be separated from the light that inhabiteth it, without ceasing to be a Silmaril.  Pippand’s hand moved insensibly to the barrow-knife in his belt.

“I love you!” screamed the lovers.  Pippand looked as though he were suffering from the mal de siècle; but the couple’s attention was elsewhere.

“Beloved!” cried Samouard Gamgès.  “I am rich from the potato cargo we transported to Brie and Rivendeau.  We can now, at long last, marry, et c’est un fait, ça!  And Monsieur Morrie, the kindly ship-owner, has promised to make me captain, since Captain Trasque has passed away.  And my poor father, who has been waiting lo these many months for my return, never complaining though he was starving to death and suffering from a nasty case of dysentery – do you know what he said to me just now?  Tout va bien qui finit encore mieux!”

“Ah!” sighed Rosédès, laughing through her mithril-bright tears.  “Nothing can destroy our happiness now!”

“Grrrrr!” remarked Pippand.

“How odd; I never noticed we were a threesome,” commented Samouard.

“Oh, Pippand, I forgot you were there!”  giggled Rosédès.  “Shake hands with my beloved Samouard, for since you are my friend, you will be his friend as well.”

A more suspicious person might well have wondered just what Pippand was doing in Rosédès’s bedroom, but Samouard was an honest, simple soul who wouldn’t suspect a Ringwraith of foul play, so he smiled and shook Pippand by the hand.  Pippand said nothing, but scowled in as friendly a manner as he could muster.

“Let us go out and promenade by l’Eau, ma petite pomme de terre,” said Gamgès. “I love thee, me dear, et c’est un fait, ça ! ”

“Yes, veritably!”  said Rosédès.  “Au revoir, Pippand!”  

“Do not omit to come to our wedding,” added Samouard.  “You shall have fried fish and quiche lorraine served by S. Gamgès.  Monsieur could not refuse that.”

He and Rosédès left arm in arm.

“Yes, monsieur could!” growled Pippand to himself.  He glared after the happy couple, sighed, finished the mushrooms, and left.

As he walked down Rue Baguechotte, he saw Otto de Sacqueville-Danglars, Samouard’s bo’sun, chatting with Buttrebeurrousse, the hôtelier of that fine bistro, Le pony prançant.

“Monsieur Morrie bestows all his favor upon Gamgès,” hissed Sacqueville-Danglars.  “It is Gamgès, that insolent young gardener, who receives the command of the Pharazon, and will quite probably gain Fin de Blague as well.”

“It’s true that he is at times of an arrogance …” replied Buttrebeurrousse.  “Just now he was offering me advice on potato-growing as if he were a maître d’.  But fortune smiles on him, and will continue to do so.”

“Perhaps it will,” replied Sacqueville-Danglars.  “Unless …”  Seeing Pippand, he smiled broadly.  “You look out of sorts, mon ami,” he cried gaily.

Pippand merely grunted in reply.  

“He has the air of a discomfited lover!” remarked Buttrebeurrousse.

“I have lost my beloved,” answered Pippand in a monotone.  “And I consumed all the mushrooms.”

“La belle Rosédès! ” cried Buttrebeurrousse.  « She’s marrying Gamgès; isn’t he the lucky dog!”

Pippand looked as if he were on the point of consuming himself – in flames, like Féanoir in the tragedy of Racine.

“Parbleu!  You need cheering up,” said Sacqueville-Danglars.  “Come with us to Le pony prançant!  I insist on bearing expenses for the drinks.”

Pippand seemed utterly indifferent to this prospect, but mechanically allowed himself to be conducted to the bistro.

“My wine has been uncommonly good since Gandault put that spell on it,” remarked Buttrebeurrousse, filling glasses for himself and his two friends.  “Would you care for some fish?”

“So juicy sweet!” murmured Pippand, although it was unclear whether he meant the fish or Rosédès.

Buttrebeurrousse summoned a garçon and ordered a tuna casserole for three.  “Though personally, I’m more interested in the wine,” he added.  “Especially since I’m attempting a new diet – but I get no thinner.”

“Drink, then,” said Sacqueville-Danglars.  “Pippand and I will bavarder a bit while you do so.”

Buttrebeurrousse needed no encouragement, and drained several glasses in honor of Gamgès, Rosédès, and his entire circle of acquaintances, along with whatever other objets de toast struck his fancy.  Before long, he was cheerfully singing songs about Thomas de Bombeville, the legendary couturier who started a fashion in yellow boots.

Meanwhile, Sacqueville-Danglars spoke to Pippand.  “If I were you, mon ami,” he said, “I would put up a bit more of a fight before letting this Gamgès take my woman to the altar.  The Toucs are said to be a race that avenge themselves well.”

“It is useless,” said Pippand.  “What can I do?”

“You can prevent the wedding,” said Sacqueville-Danglars.  “It will be hard for Gamgès to marry Rosédès if he is dead.”

“I like Samouard!” said Buttrebeurrousse, who felt more friendly towards the mariner after a few drinks.  “He helps me with my potatoes and even cooked me a wonderful bouillabaisse once.”

“Oh, we like him, too,” said Sacqueville-Danglars hastily.  “We are but making with the plaisanteries.  Why do you not ave another glass?”

“Parbleu!” laughed the hôtelier, “I don’t know why I don’t take advantage of your most generous offer.”  And he did.

“As I was saying,” continued Sacqueville-Danglars, turning to Pippand, “Kill Gamgès, and you will gain Rosédès.”

“No,” said Pippand.  “She has said she will die if he dies.  And I know Rosédès; she never promises a thing like that in vain.”

Tom-fool of a Touc! thought Sacqueville-Danglars.  Is it not navrant when one’s accomplices are such utter idiots?  They steal his mistress from under the nose, and all he does is cry like a smurreau. And what does it matter if the woman kills herself, so long as Gamgès does not become capitaine?  I only hope he has enough wit to play the part I will set him. “Très bien,” he replied aloud.  « But what if you could remove Gamgès without killing him?  Simply have him sent to prison.”

“But how?” inquired Pippand.

“And prison, one escapes from it, unless it were the catacombs of the Seigneur Ténébreux,” protested Buttrebeurrousse.  “And if one escapes from prison and is named Samouard Gamgès, one takes vengeance.  And d’ailleurs, I don’t see why Gamgès should be imprisoned; he’s a perfect gallant’hobbite.”

“Be quiet and drink to his health,” replied Sacqueville-Danglars.  Buttrebeurrousse promptly did.  Turning back to Pippand, Sacqueville-Danglars continued: “Before returning to Arnor, Gamgès followed his captain’s last wish, and delivered a letter to Sharcoléon in exile in Brie.  This letter, along with the act of accusation I am about to write, will keep M. Gamgès in prison for a long time, since Aragon XVIII’s government considers Sharcoléonist opinions to be very unfashionable indeed.”  Sacqueville-Danglars thereupon took out a pen and paper and, writing with his left hand in order that his handwriting might be more difficult to recognize, penned the following act of accusation:

 “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.”

After Pippand had read this sotto voce, Sacqueville-Danglars put the accusation into an envelope and sealed it.

“Eh!” said Buttrebeurrousse.  “You are plotting something against my friend.”

“And I told you we were but joking, did I not?” retorted Sacqueville-Danglars.

“I may be drunk, but I can see through an arc de triomphe of brick in time,” said Buttrebeurrousse, trying to seize the accusation.  Sacqueville-Danglars neatly pulled the act of accusation out of Buttrebeurrousse’s reach, and poured him another glass.

“Look,” he said.  “To prove we are only joking, I will throw this bagatelle into that corner, next to the bidet.  Then you will know we mean no harm to our friend Gamgès.”  Thereupon he turned the accusation into a paper airplane avant lettre and tossed it in the corner with the pornographic posters.  “Retrieve it later,” he whispered to Pippand.  “You know well what to do with it.”  Pippand said nothing.

Buttrebeurrousse, meanwhile, was at the last stages of drunkennesse that precede the utter loss of the senses.  “I veell sleep een Gamgès’s honneurr,” he mumbled.

“I, er, have to use the bidet, and then go,” said Pippand.  “I see someone about the drains in my smiaux, or else about a dragon, c’est presque la même chose.”  On his way to the bidet, he subtly stuck the accusation under his hat.

While Buttrebeurrousse said farewell to the wine-barrel in the cellar, Sacqueville-Danglars smiled to himself.