Chapitre 20: Printable

As Roguccio went out to arrange for the preparation of Barroue-Don for the Count’s planned expansions, the Roi des sorciers arrived in Monte Fato’s studio holding a letter on a vermilion plate. Monte Fato sighed and put down Derridine de Fanficq’s memoirs, wherein she claimed to be the mistress of half the elf-messieurs in Terre-moyenne. Admittedly, there were far fewer of the latter than before the Wars of Religion.

“What are you doing here?” said the Count. “I have not summoned you, I believe.”

Without answering, the Nazghoule presented the letter to the Count. “Urgent. Nazghoules uneasy,” he said.

The Count opened the letter and read:

“M. de Monte Fato is warned that a man or hobbite will introduce himself into his palace at Champs-Valinorées, to remove some papers that he believes enclosed in the secretary of the cabinet of the toilet; one knows that the Count of Monte Fato is too brave to have recourse to the police, a recourse that could highly compromise the sender of this warning. Monsieur le comte will be able to do justice for himself, endowed as he is with a power we may safely denominate as unlimited. Obvious precautions would no doubt keep the perpetrator at bay, but would also prevent M. de Monte Fato from learning the identity of an enemy whom chance has made known to the person who gives this warning to the Count, a warning that he may not be able to repeat if, on the failure of this attempt, the perpetrator were to renew another.”

The Count’s first reaction was to suppose a ruse of the robbers, who alerted him to a lesser danger in order to expose him to a greater. He therefore thought to bring the letter to the shirriferie, despite, or even because of the recommendation of the anonymous friend, when suddenly it occurred to him that this could be an enemy peculiar to him, and whom he alone would recognise and, in the event, defeat, as Eldacard had done of the Archduke Castamir von Pulasky who wished to assassinate him, during the Querelle of the Half-Blood Prince. One knows the Count; we have therefore no need to say that he was a spirit full of audacity and vigor, who stiffened against the impossible with that energy which only a superior man, of a noble kind against whom none who be wise durst raise a hand, possesses.

“They do not want to steal my papers, but to kill me,” said Monte Fato to himself. “They are not robbers, but assassins. It is probable that they hope to obtain the Ring of Rings; but if they fancy a trifle, they shall find this dessert highly unpalatable. I do not wish for monsieur le préfet des shirrifes to meddle in my personal affairs. I am rich enough in magical jewellery to spare his administration that expense.”

After supper, the Count took a promenade with Gali from his villa in Barroue-Don to his palais on Champs-Valinorées, which he reached at nightfall. Monte Fato leaned against a tree and, with that Eye that so seldom erred, sounded the double avenue, examined the passers-by, and shot a glance down the neighbouring streets to see if any had prepared an ambush. Convinced that no one was lying in wait for him, he ran to the small door with Gali, entered precipitously, and, by the servants’ stairway, whereof he had the key, he entered his bed-chamber, without opening or deranging a single curtain, without that the concierge Camoul the Esterling himself could suspect a spy on the stairs. He opened the secretary that was carven of fimbréthil-mahogany (the Count was quite the connoisseur of mahogany, and was able to distinguish precisely 338 different shades of it), and assured himself that no papers were missing. Satisfied, he removed his Ring from its pendant and put it on. Gali bowed in abject dread. Thus armed, the Count held the life of Elves, Men, and Dwarves in his hands. Gali had no need of weapons, for none strangled a gobelin nor snacked thereon with deadlier impact than he. Both were concealed by the miasma that issued forth from the Ring.

As the clock struck midnight, the Count heard a light sound next to the cabinet, followed in short order by three more; by the fourth, the Count knew that a firm and practiced hand was at work cutting the four corners of the window next to the cabinet with a silmaril.

The Count felt his heart beat more rapidly. However hardened a man be against danger, nay, however invincible he be on account of magical objects, he always understands, by the palpitation of his heart, the difference between dream and reality, between project and execution, between having one’s pipe in one’s pack and having leaf.

Through the opening in the window, an arm passed searching for the catch; a second later, the window turned on its hinges, and a hobbite entered. The hobbite was alone.

“Voilà a hardy rogue,” murmured the Count. But Gali pointed to the window of the room wherein they were concealed, and which gave onto the road. There Monte Fato saw an ent-balrogue mounted on the Stone of Three Centimes, who seemed to be studying what happened in the palais.

“Bon!” he said. “They are two: one acts, the other watches.”

The glass-cutter had entered and found his bearings, and had begun to open the secretary with a skeleton key like that employed by Bilbon in relieving Colonel de Smaugue of his convertible debentures and short-term municipals.

“Ah! Ah!” murmured Monte Fato with a smile of disappointment. “It’s only a robber.”

Then the Eye suddenly, piercing all shadows, apperceived the identity of the hobbite who had insinuated himself, a nuisance that crept, small but ennuyeux, into the very heart of the Count’s impregnable abode. The Count whispered to Gali, who immediately detached from the alcove where they stood a blond ponytailed wig, a black vestment, and a three-cornered Noldorin hat. Donning this disguise, the Count became an elvish abbé.

The monsieur ent-balrogue he had seen mounted on the Stone of the Three Centimes had descended, and was pacing in the street; but, a singular thing, instead of watching for those who might come via Champs-Valinorées or by the faubourg St.-Cirdant, he seemed preoccupied only with what happened in the palais of the Count.

Monte Fato struck his forehead and laughed silently, then ordered Gali to stay hidden whilst he issued forth from their hiding-place. He then revealed himself to the robber in the form of a white figure that glowed, one of the mighty of the first-born, an Elf-lord from a house of princes, and caused the secretary to rise up in anger to bar itself from the thief. The skeleton-key vanished in a flash of flame.

“Bonsoir, monsieur Buttrebeurrousse,” said Monte Fato. “What the morgot are you doing here at such an hour?”

“The abbé Glorfindoni!” cried Buttrebeurrousse. And not knowing how this strange apparition had come before him, he remained immobile and stricken with amazement.

The Count went between Buttrebeurrousse and the window, thus cutting the terrified robber off from his sole means of escape.

“Eh bien, sans doute, the abbé Glorfindoni,” replied Monte Fato, “himself in person, and I am well content that you recognise me, monsieur Buttrebeurrousse; that proves you have a good memory, for, if I am not mistaken, we have not met for ten years, during which you have seen many defeats, and many fruitless investments.”

That calm, that irony, that puissance, struck the spirit of Buttrebeurrousse with a vertiginous terror. “The abbé, the abbé!” he murmured, gnashing his teeth.

“We wish then to rob the Count of Monte Fato?” continued the pretended abbé.

“Monsieur l’abbé … I don’t know … I swear … I beg you to believe …”

“A cut window; a dark lantern; a trousseau of skeleton keys – it is clear, however,” continued the Count. “I see that you are always the same, monsieur l’assassin.”

“Monsieur l’abbé, since you know everything, you know it is not I, but la Carcharotte; it was recognised at the trial, so that I was only condemned to read the poetry of Bombadile.”

“And you finished your time?”

“No, monsieur; I was delivered.”

“Then you have broken your parole?”

“Alas,” said Buttrebeurrousse, very unquiet.

“Bad resumption of your life of crime; this will lead you first to the guillotine, and then to the least fashionable quarters in Mandaux, if I am not mistaken. A pity, a pity, morgotto turpso retconno as the worldly say in my country.”

“Monsieur l’abbé, destitution …”

“Leave such nonsense,” said Glorfindoni disdainfully. “Destitution leads to begging of alms or stealing a loaf from the bakery, but not to forcing the secretary of a house one believes uninhabited. And when the jeweller Ouanqueur paid you 987 mushroom-lions of mithril, a necklace of the dwarves, and a shape-shifting helmet for the silmaril I had given you, and you killed him to have the silmaril and the money, was that also destitution?”

“Forgive me, monsieur l’abbé …” whimpered the thief.

“That does not encourage me.”

“Are you alone, or do have shirrifes or gendarmes at your disposal?”

“I am alone, and am willing to have mercy, if you tell me the entire truth,” said Glorfindoni. “Who delivered you from prison?”

“A Snowman by the name of Lord Frosty.”

“This Snowman protected you, then?”

“Not me, but a young balrogue who was my chain-mate.”

“And what was the name of this balrogue?”

“Trascoletto. He had no other; he was a foundling.”

“So, how did this young man, or ent, or balrogue, escape with you?”

“While the other convicts were taking a siesta …”

“Convicts taking a siesta! Weep for those fellows!”

“One cannot always read bad verse; one isn’t a dog, or even an orc.”

“Happily for the orcs,” said Monte Fato.

“So, while the others took their siesta, we cut our irons with a strand of the hair of Luthienne that the Snowman had given us, and escaped by swimming.”

“And what happened to Trascoletto?”

“I know nothing.”

“You lie!” said the abbé Glorfindoni, with an accent of irresistible authority. “You lie! That man is still your friend, and you serve as his accomplice, perhaps?”

“Oh! Monsieur l’abbé …”

“Since you left the gatehouse in l’Archet, how have you lived?”

“As I could.”

“You lie! You have lived on the money he has given you.”

“It is true,” said Buttrebeurrousse, terrified. “Trascoletto has become the son of a grand seigneur.”

“And what name do you give this grand seigneur?”

“The Count of Monte Fato, the same in whose palais we now are.”

“Trascoletto the son of the Count?” replied Monte Fato, astonished.

“Par les cheveux de Luthienne, we must well believe it,” said Buttrebeurrousse, “since the Count has found him a false father, since the Count pays him some 500,000 mushroom-lions of mithrile per month.”

“Ah, and what name does he go by?”

“Andurillo de’ Pseudonimi.”

“Then it’s the young man who is destined to marry Mlle. Sacqueville-Danglars?”

“Precisely.”

“And you suffer that, wretch, knowing his life and the mark of infamy he bears?” cried Glorfindoni.

“Why should I prevent a comrade from succeeding?” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“You are right; it is not for you to warn M. de Sacqueville-Danglars, but for me.”

“Do not do that, monsieur l’abbé! we will lose our bread.”

“And you believe that, to maintain the livelihood of wretches such as you, I will become an accomplice to your crimes? I shall tell M. de Sacqueville-Danglars everything.”

“Par le violon de Melcoeur!” cried Buttrebeurrousse, drawing a knife from his gilet, and striking the Count in the heart. « You will tell nothing, abbé!”

The knife melted, and vanished like the absinthe that evaporates when lit and that, when smoked with tobacco and a soupçon (no more) of hachich, causes one to write Gothic novels about damsels who have strange affairs with haut-bourgeois dragons, leaving only the hilt.

“Ach nazgue gilbertoule!” cried the Count, holding aloft his Ring.

“Mercy!” cried Buttrebeurrousse. “Let me live just a little longer. All my investments have crumbled into dust! Dust!”

The Count removed his Ring. “Rise!” he said. “I do not trust you as far as the ballerinas of the Théâtre-Hobbites could kick you; but rise.”

“Tudieu, what jewellery you have, monsieur l’abbé!” said Buttrebeurrousse, trembling . “Not even Pierre Noir, the cutthroat dread, durst steal it!”

“Silence. Érou has given me the strength to tame a wretched gangrel creature like you; it is in the name of Érou and the Valards that I act. Remember that, miserable, and know that sparing you yet serves the designs of Érou. For I was meant to have the Ring, and not by its maker. Now by the style of the Précieux I command you, take this pen and paper and write.”

Buttrebeurrousse, subjugated by this superior power, took the pen and wrote: “Monsieur, the man whom you receive into your home and to whom you have destined your daughter is a former convict, escaped with me from the prison of l’Archet with the aid of Harry the gatekeeper. He bore the number 59 and I the number 58. His name was Trascoletto, but he himself is ignorant of his true name and parentage.”

“Sign!” continued the Count.

“Do you wish to destroy me?” squealed Buttrebeurrousse in a voice like that of the failed castrato Pippesquique.

“If I wished to destroy you, imbecile, I had first borne you to houses of lamentation, where thy shrivelled flesh would be devoured with mayonnaise and washed down with an apéritif, and afterwards ordered thee to cast thyself from this window, nor could you resist my will.”

Buttrebeurrousse signed the document and addressed it to M. Sacqueville-Danglars, banker, at Maison Cul-de-Sac, according to the Count’s command. The abbé took the note.

“Now go,” said the Count.

“What will you do to me?” asked Buttrebeurrousse. Fervently.

“I ask you. I tried to make you an honest man, and created a murderer!”

“Try one more test, monsieur l’abbé,” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“So be it. If you return safe and sound to your home, we shall see. If you then leave Arnor, and conduct yourself honorably, I shall send you a small pension, enough to keep you respectable, and shall lend you a small dragon as a guardian and financial adviser. For if you return home safe, I will believe Érou and the Valards have forgiven you, and I too shall forgive you.”

“True as I am of Brie,” said Buttrebeurrousse, “you make me die of fear!”

“Now go!” said the Count, pointing to the window. “Descend!”

Buttrebeurrousse understood that he had nothing to fear from the abbé Glorfindoni, and descended.

But when Buttrebeurrousse reached the ground, a man clad in the uniform and feathered hat of a gendarme-shirrife elanced himself and seized the wretched burglar.

Buttrebeurrousse cried “I haven’t got it!” But the gendarme laughed ironically and revealed himself to be Andurillo; then he stabbed Buttrebeurrousse several times. “FEAR! FIRE! FOES! MURDER!” cried Buttrebeurrousse.

His assailant stabbed him once more, and then fled.

After the assassin had departed, Buttrebeurrousse raised himself upon his elbow, and, making a supreme effort, cried in a dying voice, “Murder! I’m dying! To me, monsieur l’abbé, to me!”

This lugubrious appeal pierced the shadows of the night. The door to the servants’ stairway opened, and Gali and his master came bearing lights.

The Count commanded Gali to fetch M. de Villefaramir and a doctor with all due haste. Gali bowed and wagged his tail, and departed with the flight of the balrogues, leaving the false abbé alone with Buttrebeurrousse. The Count regarded Buttrebeurrousse with a sombre expression of pity, and murmured a prayer.

“A physician!” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“My gangrel-slave has gone in search of one,” said the abbé.

“I know it is useless, as far as my life is concerned,” said Buttrebeurrousse. “But I would at least live long enough to make my declaration against my murderer.”

“You know who he is, then?”

“If I know! It’s the Balrogician, it’s Trascoletto! After giving me the plan to the house, doubtless hoping I would either kill the Count, so that he might gain his inheritance, or the Count would kill me, so that he would be rid of me, he awaited me in the road and slew me.”

“I have also sent for the steuard du roi.”

“He will be too late. I feel my blood leave me.”

“Wait,” said the Count, and gave Buttrebeurrousse two drops from a phial of sunni-délit.

“Oh!” said Buttrebeurrousse. “It is life itself that you pour for me there … more … more …”

“Two more drops had killed you,” said the Count.

“Ah, now let someone come to whom I can denounce the wretch.”

“Do you wish me to write your deposition?” asked the abbé.

“Oui … oui,” said Buttrebeurrousse, whose eyes shone at the idea of this posthumous vengeance.

Monte Fato wrote: “I die assassinated at the hands of the Balrogician Trascoletto, my chain-mate at l’Archet.”

“You will tell the rest, n’est-ce pas, monsieur l’abbé?” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“I shall tell them that his name was Andurillo de’ Pseudonimi, that he resides at the Hôtel des Deux-Thrains, that he sent the Count an anonymous note in the hope that the Count would slay you, that I received this note in the Count’s absence, that he arrived after you and lay in wait for you.”

“You saw all that and did not warn me?” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“Remember my words,” said the abbé. “If you return safe and sound to your home, I said, we shall see. And we do effectively see. In the hand of Trascoletto, I saw the justice of the Valards, and I would have believed myself to commit a sacrilege in opposing the designs of the Pouvoirs.”

“Ah, you believe in Érou and the Valards, then? It is but Elvish belles-lettres, to beguile unwary peasant-girls. The Sea has no shore. There is no Chandelier in the West. You have followed a fool-fire of the Elves to the end of the railroad! Who has seen the least of the gods? If there were a justice of the Valards, you know better than I that there are people who should be punished and are not.”

“Patience!” said the abbé in a tone that made the dying man tremble. “Érou and the Valards are full of mercy for you. They gave you life, health, strength, an assured occupation, friends even, all in life that is needed to provide calm of conscience and the satisfaction of natural desires. Instead of exploiting these gifts of the One, you have dedicated yourself to sloth, to drunkenness, and in a state of drunkenness you betrayed one of your best friends. After you betrayed your friend, the Valards began, not to strike you, but to warn you; the eagles of Manvre assailed you not yet with their claws, but with droppings only. You fell into misery and hunger, and began to envy the life that you could have led, had you bothered, when from the blessed realm there arrives thee a silmaril that perhaps Éarendeau himself used for a bowling-ball. But this unheard of, unexpected wealth does not suffice you, from the moment you come to possess it; you seek to double it, and through murder.”

“It is not I who wanted to kill the dwarf, but la Carcharotte,” said Buttrebeurrousse.

“Yes, and therefore Érou showed mercy to you; you were not put to death, but to perpetual imprisonment.”

“Perpetual imprisonment! A fine mercy!”

“It seemed such to you, miserable, when it was made! Your cowardly heart bounded for joy at the announcement of a perpetual shame. For, you thought, there is no escape from the tomb, but there is from prison. And you were right, for a Snowman had pity on you and ransomed you with the ring of l’Arvédui. A second fortune descends upon you from Valineur, tossed upon thy worthless head by the eagles of Manvre; and, given a chance to recommence a life like that of other dwellers of Terre-moyenne, you set about tempting Érou a third time. Érou has had enough; Érou has punished you. The Valards have risen in wrath.”

At this moment the splat of an enormous bird fell upon Buttrebeurrousse, who cursed and raised his fist to heaven. Monte Fato waved a hand, and the mess vanished.

“That criminal Trascoletto will escape, however!” cried the victim

“No, none shall escape,” said the Count in a voice mightier yet than that of Saroumand when addressing a diplomatic meeting on tolls. “It is I who tell you it, Buttrebeurrousse: Trascoletto shall be punished!”

“Then you too will be punished. You should have prevented Trascoletto from killing me. Your conduct is more like that of the editors of the Wikipédie than the defenders of the Ouest.”

“I!” said the Count with a smile that caused the dying man to freeze with dread. “I prevent Trascoletto from slaying you, at the moment when you had raised a knife against me – in vain, for no hobbite possesses a weapon that can hurt me! yes, perhaps had I found you humble and repentant, I would have prevented Trascoletto from slaying thee, but I found thee proud and sanguinary, and I let be accomplished the will of the Valards and the One who is beyond Valineur and ever shall be.”

“I do not believe these Eldarin lies!” cried Buttrebeurrousse. “You do not believe either! You lie! You lie!”

“There is a Providence,” said Monte Fato. “And the proof is that you lie before me dying and renouncing the Old Hope of our forebears, while I stand before you alive, strong, healthy, and endued with unlimited and irresistible power, joining my hands in prayer before those in whom you seek to disbelieve, and in whom you believe from the depths of your heart. Did not Pierre-Jacques write that Providence assured that the hobbites died not upon Monte Fato, but merely enacted a scene of cheap suspense? Did not Providence bring them to the forest of Fangornes, where they speculated in the furniture industry?”

“But who are you, then?”

“Look well upon me,” said Monte Fato, removing his elven disguise, including the startlingly realistic elf-ears in the shape of maple-leaves.

“Oh, then you are not l’abbé Glorfindoni? Then I would say you resembled the Snowman, were it not for the way you call to mind Jean-Astin, the popular tenor.”

“I am neither one nor the other,” said Monte Fato. “Look better, look further, search your earliest memories, and you will know me, c’est un fait, ça.”

There was in these words of the Count a magnetic vibration whereby the exhausted senses of the miserable one were revived one last time.

“Had it been possible to save you, I swear by the tomb and pipe-weed of my father, I would have tried to return you to life and to repentance,” continued the Count.

“Who are you then?”

The Count understood that this was the last élan of life; he approached the dying man, covering him with a look at once calm and sad, and whispered in his ear: “I am …” and pronounced a name so low, that the Count himself seemed afraid to hear it.

And Buttrebeurrousse, by a supreme effort, knelt, lifted his arms to heaven, and cried: “Oh, my Érou, my Érou, pardon me for having denied you; you exist indeed, you are the father and judge of Men, Hobbites, Dwarves, Ents, and Elves, who sank the accursed isle of Numéneur and raised up from its ruin a remnant that now adorns the salotti of Gondor. Long have I misknown you! Forgive me! Receive me!”

And closing his eyes, Buttrebeurrousse fell back with a last cry and a last breath. He was dead.

“One!” said the Count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the corpse.

Ten minutes later, the doctor Tolliers and the steuard du roi arrived, accompanied by Gali, and were received by the abbé Glorfindoni, who prayed at the side of the dead man.