Chapitre 22: Printable

“’No,’ said Pérégrin, making an effort to rise. ‘And it is a plot hatched by my enemies, a Sharcoléonist rumor, a legend of Rohan, a lie of Christophe Trolquien.’

“’You do not recognise me!’ cried Shélobe. ‘Eh bien, I, happily, recognise you! You are Pippand de Touc, the Arnorian officer who instructed the troops of my noble father. It is you who delivered the castle of Quirithe-Oungallant! It is you who, sent to Minas-Morgoule to negotiate for the life of your benefactor, brought back a false decree according full pardon! It is you who, with this decree, obtained the ring of the Pasha and deceived Babar, the guardian of the fire, and stabbed him! It is you who sold us, me and my mother, to Pougue! Assassin! Ferengoil! Robber of the North! The blood of your master stains your forehead! Let all behold! My mother,’ she continued, ‘said to me, Remember this man who has enslaved you and placed the head of your father upon a pike and used it as a golphimboule! Look well upon the scar on his right hand, in the shape of a balrogue wing; if you forget his face, remember him by this hand wherein fell the pieces of gold of the merchant Pougue! If I recognise him! Let him dare now to tell me he does not recognise me!’

“Each word fell like Narsile upon Pérégrin and cut off a parcel of his energy; at these last words, he concealed quickly and despite himself his hand in his military coat; and fell back onto his chair, abysmed by a despair darker than the heart of Pierre-Jacques the betrayer of Trolquien or than the négligée of Oungolianne.

“‘Monsieur de Pérégrin,’ said the president. ‘Respond! The moutants will not allow you to be crushed by your enemies without giving you the means to combat them, as Sauron did of the Orc accused of podultery. Do you wish new inquiries? Should the Chamber send investigators to Quirithe-Oungallant? Speak!’

“The count said nothing. The members of the commission regarded each other with a kind of terror. They knew the energetic and aggressive character of the count; it needed a terrible prostration to annihilate the defense of that man.

“’Has the daughter of Ala-Pallando then spoken the truth?’ said the president. ‘Is she truly the terrible witness before whom the guilty dare not utter the word: NO?’

“’The count looked around with an expression that had filled Glaurond himself with pity, but could not disarm judges; then he looked towards the ceiling, but turned his gaze therefrom in dread of that other tribunal, that of the Valards and of Érou. Then, with a brusque movement, he tore the buttons from his uniform and left the hall with the sombre regard of a madman, as Turin when Glaurond revealed to him the identity of the merveilleuse he had been courting; then the rolling of the carriage that bore him thence shook the portici of the Palais Rohirrin.†

“’Messieurs,’ said the president, when there was silence. ‘Is M. the Count of Pérégrin convicted of felony, treason, and indignity?’

“’Oui!’ responded the commissioners with one voice.

Revesting herself of her veil, Shélobe majestically took her leave of the Assembly, and left in the gait of a queen of the Valards.”

~~~

Réginard lifted his face, red with shame and with tears, and seized Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines’ arm.

“Friend, my life is finished,” he said. “It only remains for me to discover what man pursues me with his enmity; then, when I find him, I will slay that man, or he will slay me, for neither can live while the other survives. I count on your friendship to aid me, Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, if contempt have not annihilated it in your heart.”

“Contempt, mon ami?” said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. “Non! Not though thy bourzoum-ichy tobacco be less than stellar! We are no longer in a time when an unjust prejudice rendered sons responsible for the crimes of their fathers, so that Curufin’s illegitimate children had to be excluded from all at-homes because he touched the ankles of Luthienne at a ball without her permission. Abandon yourself to the designs of Providence. Remember, Réginard, that you are young, you are rich; leave Arnor for a time, everything is forgotten quickly in this great Gondolin of changing tastes. You will return in three or four years, married to some Rhunian princess like the Vidugavskaya in Count Ivan Rurik Reuelevich Tolkstoi’s fsamous novel …”

“My dear Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, you will understand that I see these events from a different angle from yours. It appears to me that Providence is completely alien to all of this, and I see the hand of a palpable and visible enemy, on whom I shall avenge myself.”

“Very well; so be it!” said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. “I shall tell you what I did not wish to tell you upon returning from Quirithe-Oungallant. It is this: that I was questioned on my arrival in Annuminas by the banker Sacqueville-Danglars.”

“Him!” cried Réginard. “Indeed, it is he who pursues my family with a jealous hatred; he, who pretends to be a friend of the people, who cannot forgive the Count de Pérégrin for being a Peer of Arnor! And this breaking off of a marriage without giving a reason … yes, that is it.”

“Réginard, be prudent …”

“Have no fear. You will accompany me, and we shall assure ourselves of the truth. If my suspicions be correct, either I or Sacqueville-Danglars shall die.”

“Very well. Let us go.”

~~~

Réginard burst into Sacqueville-Danglars’s amphitheatre, where the banker was entertaining Andurillo de’ Pseudonimi in an evening of banknote-counting.

“You forget yourself strangely, forcing your way into my domicile like Bombadile at the seventeenth soirée of Saroumand,” said Sacqueville-Danglars. “What do you wish, finally?”

“I wish,” said Réginard, completely ignoring Pseudonimi, “to propose a rendezvous in a little corner, where we can meet without interruption until one of us dies and goes where scandals matter no more. You can invite your future son-in-law if you wish; he is almost part of the family.”

“When I see an enraged wargue in my path, monsieur,” replied Sacqueville-Danglars, pale with anger and fear, “I kill it, and far from feeling culpable, consider myself to have conferred a benefit upon society by ridding it of a cheap theatrical effect. Is it then my fault your father is dishonoured? Did I counsel him to sell out Ala-Pallando?”

“Silence!” cried Réginard hoarsely. “Who wrote to Quirithe-Oungallant for information on my father?”

“Why, it seems to me that anyone could write to Quirithe-Oungallant. The balrogue de Morie could have done it for a lark.”

“He could have; but you, in effect, did.”

“I confess I did write,” replied Sacqueville-Danglars. “I thought I had the right to inform myself about my future son-in-law. But writing to Quirithe-Oungallant had not occurred to me; do I know anything about Ala-Pallando?”

“Someone else pushed you to write, then?” asked Réginard.

“Yes,” said Sacqueville-Danglars. “I remarked that I had no notion of how the Count de Pérégrin had made his fortune. My interlocutor replied, ‘Eh bien, write to Quirithe-Oungallant.’”

“Who is this interlocutor?” demanded Réginard.

“Parbleu! Your friend, the Count of Monte Fato,” said Sacqueville-Danglars.

“Did he know my father’s Christian name and surname?” asked Réginard.

“Yes, I had told him long ago,” said Sacqueville-Danglars. “But when your father came to officially ask the hand of my daughter, I refused without éclat, without giving a reason or referring to the events of his past. What does the honor or dishonour of Pérégrin matter to me? There is no profit in that, say the rules of acquisition.”

Réginard felt himself blush; there was now no doubt that Sacqueville-Danglars spoke, if not all the truth, at least some of it. Moreover, what did the viscount de Pérégrin seek? It was not the greater or lesser culpability of Sacqueville-Danglars or Monte Fato, but a man who would fight, and it was evident that M. de Sacqueville-Danglars would not fight.

And then, each forgotten or unperceived thing became visible to his eyes or present to his memory. Monte Fato knew all, because he had bought the daughter of Ala-Pallando; knowing all, he had counselled Sacqueville-Danglars to write to Quirithe-Oungallant. Knowing that response, he had acceded to Réginard’s request to be introduced to Shélobe. He had allowed the conversation to fall upon the death of Ala-Pallando, though no doubt, in those few words in Orkish, instructing her not to name her father’s betrayer. Moreover, had he not forbidden Pérégrin to utter the name of his father before Shélobe? Lastly, he had brought Pérégrin to Le Havre-Gris at the moment when he knew the éclat was to take place. There could be no doubt that this had all been calculated, and that Monte Fato was in league with his father’s enemies.

“Monsieur,” he said to Sacqueville-Danglars, “you understand that I do not take definitive leave of you; it remains for me to know if your inculpations are just, and I will assure myself of this chez M. the Count of Monte Fato.”

Sacqueville-Danglars saw Réginard and Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines to the door, assuring them that he bore no ill will against the Count de Pérégrin.

~~~

On arriving at Monte Fato’s palais, Réginard learnt that the Count was bathing, and that after that he would be at dinner, and thereafter he would attend the new opera about Maidraux the son of Féanoir. Réginard and Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines agreed that they would visit the Count’s box at the Opéra that night, accompanied by Château-Renard, Arafrantz, and De Brie.

Then Réginard visited his mother, who was crushed by the pain of this public humiliation. The sight of Réginard caused her to break out in sobs; yet these tears comforted her.

“Mother,” said Réginard. “Do you know of any enemies of M. de Pérégrin?”

Rosédès shuddered. She noticed that the young hobbite had not said, “my father.”

“My friend,” she replied, “people in the position of the count have many enemies that they do not know; and the enemies one knows are not the most dangerous.”

“Indeed,” said Réginard. “Mother, you are a woman so superior that nothing escapes you! It was you who noticed, at the ball you gave one evening, that the Count of Monte Fato would not eat anything we served him.”

“Monte Fato!” she cried. “What has he to do with all this?”

“You know, my mother, that M. de Monte Fato is almost a man of Harade, and the Haradrins, in order to conserve the liberty of taking vengeance, never dine chez their enemies.”

“Monte Fato, our enemy, say you, Réginard?” said Rosédès, becoming paler than the smoking-jacket of Gandault after his makeover. “Who told you that? M. de Monte Fato has only politesses for us; he has even saved your life. My son, if I have but one entreaty to make you, I beg you to remain on good terms with him.”

“Mother,” replied the young hobbite with a sombre look. “You have your own reasons for telling me to handle that man with caution; is this reason not that that man can do us harm? Rather as Saroumand recommended a policy of appeasement towards Sauron, knowing the superiority of the latter’s armaments and jewellery manufactories.”

“You speak strangely,” said Rosédès. “Just three days ago you regarded the Count as your best friend. But enough of this; I have need of your company, as I feel unwell and do not wish to be alone.”

“I would be at your orders, mother, and you know with what happiness, did not a pressing and important affair require my absence this evening,” said Réginard.

Rosédès sighed and gave Réginard leave to depart; but as soon as he had left, she summoned a domestic of confidence and ordered that he follow Réginard wherever he went that evening, and return to report on his whereabouts immediately.

Réginard encountered Château-Renard and they both entered Réginard’s coupée. Having no reason to hide where he was going, he said out loud, “To the Opéra!”

~~~

Arrived at the Opéra du Shiré, Réginard wandered around the theatre hoping to encounter Monte Fato in a corridor or stairway. The bell called him to his place, and he installed himself between Château-Renard and Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines.

His eyes did not leave the Count’s loge for an instant, but the loge remained obstinately empty. The performance was a brilliant success. The chorus "Eh bien! Nous sommes les Manqués!" had rarely been better sung. But it was all wasted on Réginard, whose mind had but a single thought: vengeance. Not more darkened was the heart of Féanoir when he burnt the ships at Alqualondée than Réginard’s was at that performance.

Finally, at the beginning of the second act, the door of the Count’s loge opened, and Monte Fato, dressed in a black yet more classic than that of Sauron in the heyday of the Barad-dour saison, entered and leaned on the ramp to look into the hall, followed by Meurtrier Morrie.

The Count, in letting his circular Eye encompass the hall, soon apperceived Réginard, but the expression that he observed on that disturbed visage no doubt counselled him not to have recognised the young hobbite. But, without appearing to have seen Réginard, his sure and infallible Eye did not lose sight of him for an instant, and, when the curtain fell on the second act, like wheel of fire it followed the young hobbite leaving his loge accompanied by his two friends. When he heard the door to his loge open, the Count sensed that a very storm of the salon was upon him, and, although he continued to speak to Morrie about the price of mushrooms with his most laughing visage, he knew with what he had to deal, and was ready for everything.

The door opened. Only then did the Count turn and face Réginard, who was livid and trembling as Barbarbre inebriated on ent-draught and having had his shade of mahogany insulted by Saroumad; behind him were Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines and Château-Renard.

“Well!” cried the Count with that benevolent politesse that distinguished his salutations, be they ever so banal, from those of the common herd of orcaille. “Voilà my cavalier arrived to the end of all ends, the Quest is achieved, and all is over! Bonsoir, M. de Pérégrin.”

“We are not come to exchange hypocritical courtesies or false semblances of friendship,” said Réginard through gritted teeth, “but to demand an explanation. You extend your hand to me, and I perceive only a finger of the claw of Mordor.”

“At the Opéra?” replied the Count with the voice so calm and reasonable, awakening in all listeners the desire by swift agreement to seem wise and reasonable and au courant themselves, and the Eye so penetrating that one recognises in that man eternally sure of himself and of his Ring. “Unfamiliar though I be with Annuminasian customs, I did not think it was there that explanations were sought.”

“Nonetheless, if people hide, and make themselves invisible under the pretext of being in the bath, or at dinner, or indisposed, or of having sold their palais to Sacqueville-Danglars, then one must address them where one finds them.”

“Yet, you were with me only yesterday, if my memory deceives me not,” said Monte Fato.

“Yesterday, I was with you because I did not know who you were,” replied the young hobbite, raising his voice to the extent that Mme. Goldeberrie interrupted her affair with a badger to take a peek into the Count’s loge. “You are a cruel one, monsieur le comte. Beneath your superficial grace and urbanity, you have all the tender kindness of a crocodile who is malade d’amour – although, on the whole, I prefer the crocodile, even when inebriated with absinthe. For you are grown wise and cruel.”

“Monsieur, I do not understand you, and even if I did, you would be making far too much noise. I am here chez moi, and I alone have the right to raise my voice. Leave, monsieur de Pérégrin!” And he showed Réginard the door with an admirable gesture of command.

At the name of Pérégrin, a murmur of astonishment passed like a shudder among the auditors of this scene. Better than any, and the first of all, Réginard understood the allusion, and would have thrown his glove at the Count, had not his friends restrained him. “To the cowardice of youth, have you added the weakness of age?” he taunted. “I shall hurt you with nasty cruel steel, thou gobbleur!”

“Monsieur,” said Monte Fato in a terrible voice, “I will take your glove for having been thrown, and will return it to you as a token that doom is at hand. Now leave, for your mission is at an end and death awaits you; or I shall call the Nazghoules with my Ring and command them to hang you on a gibbet for the nourishment of their pterodactyls.”

Drunk, alarmed, with bloodshot eyes, Réginard took a step backwards. Morrie took advantage thereof and shut the door.

“What will you to do to him?” he asked the Count.

“Réginard?” said Monte Fato with a tone of imperturbable tranquillity. “I will kill him tomorrow before the fashionable monde can utter the words ‘comme il faut.’”

“Ah, Count!” cried Morrie, taking Monte Fato by the hand, and releasing the hand immediately because of the heat of that hand, which was black and yet burned like fire. “His father loves him so!”

“Do not tempt me! I would make him suffer,” said Monte Fato, showing anger for the first time.

“Count, count!” cried Morrie, stupefied.

“My dear Meurtrier,” interrupted the Count. “Listen to the adorable fashion wherein Vieux-Nôques sings that phrase, Que de charmes ont pour moi les silmarils! He performs it so plaintively that the character of Féanoir becomes almost sympathetic.”

When the curtain fell, there was another knocq at the door. Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines entered.

“Bonsoir, monsieur Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines,” said Monte Fato, as if he were seeing Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines for the first time. “Be seated then.”

“Monsieur, Réginard was wrong to lose his temper,” said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. “I come on my own account to make my excuses, and now that my excuses are made, mine, you understand, monsieur le comte, I am come to tell you that I believe too much a gentleman to refuse certain explanations on the affair of Quirithe-Oungallant.”

“How disappointing!” said the Count with a laugh. “You are so eager to give me a reputation of eccentricity; I am, according to you, a Gimly, a Jared, a Michel-Matrineau-Jackson, the Wizard of Ozes; now, the moment for seeing me as eccentric having passed, you spoil your stereotype, you try to make me banal. You wish me common, vulgar, you request explanations, finally. You might as well dash yourself to pieces on the rock of Galadriella, or drown yourself in the teacup of Ulmon. You jest, monsieur!”

“However,” resumed Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines with hauteur, “there are occasions where probity commands …”

“Monsieur Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines,” interrupted the strange man, “what commands the Count of Monte Fato is none other than the Count of Monte Fato. I alone am Master of the Fates of Arde.”

“It only remains then to fix the arrangements for the combat.”

“That is perfectly indifferent to me, monsieur,” said the Count of Monte Fato. “It was useless to derange me at the spectacle for so small a thing. Tell your client that, although I am the insulted party, I leave him the choice of weapons, and will accept everything without debate, in order to remain eccentric to the end. Everything, even the hay-wrestling of the Shiré, which is always stupid. But I, it is another matter. I am sure to win.”

“Sure to win!” repeated Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, regarding the Count with an alarmed eye.

“Certainly,” said the Count with a light shrug. “I will slay him, it is necessary, so it shall be. Only, indicate the time and the weapon; I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“With blunderbusses, at eight in the morning, at the forest of Escary,” said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, discountenanced, not knowing whether he had to do with an overweening braggart or a supernatural being.

“C’est bien, monsieur,” replied Monte Fato. "Now that all is in order, pray let me listen to the spectacle, and tell your friend Réginard not to return this evening; he will do himself wrong with his brutalities in bad taste."

Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines left, astonished.

~~~

On arriving at his palais after the performance, the Count called for his favourite weapon: “Gali, my blunderbuss engraved with the oeil-de-lys and containing the hilt of Glammedringue!”

Gali brought the firearm to his master. It had been made to order by the dwarvish artisan Telcharmann. One capsule and a word of command sufficed to chase the bullet; and one could not doubt that the Count, as one says in terms of shooting, was occupied to converse with the hand.

He was about to practice the weapon on a target with the names of his three adversaries written in blood, when the Roi des sorciers appeared, followed by a veiled woman, more shadowy than wing of balrogue.

She had perceived the Count, blunderbuss in hand, and two swords on the table; she sprang forward.

The Count made a sign, and the Roi des sorciers vanished, returning sans doute to the world of the Unseen, and its probably highly fashionable balls.

“Who are you, madame?” asked the Count of the woman, or balroguette.

Kneeling, and clasping her hands with the accent of despair, the woman said: “Samouard! You will not kill my son!”

The Count took a step backwards, gave a feeble cry, and let fall his blunderbuss. “What name, which it is forbidden to spell, have you uttered, Madame de Pérégrin?” said he.

“Yours!” she cried, casting off her veil. “Yours, which I alone perhaps have not forgotten! For it is not Mme. de Pérégrin who comes to you, but Rosédès.”

“Rosédès is dead, madame,” said Monte Fato. “Buried, I hope, though with these new fashions in dining one never knows.”

“Rosédès lives, monsieur, and Rosédès remembers, for alone she has recognised you when she has seen you, and even without seeing you, Samouard, at the sound of your voice alone; and since that time she has watched you, has followed you, fears you, and she has no need to seek the hand that struck M. de Pérégrin.”

“Pippand, you mean, madame,” said Monte Fato with a bitter irony, and pronouncing the name of Pippand with such hatred that Rosédès felt a shudder of dread run through her whole body. “Since we are remembering our names, even illegal ones, let us remember them all.”

“You see, then, that I was right, Samouard,” cried Rosédès. “and that I have reason to say to you: Spare my son, et c’est un fait, ça!”

“And who tells you, madame, that I bear a grudge against your son?”

“A mother is endowed with second sight and needs no palantir. I divined everything; I followed him to the Opéra, and, hidden in a ground-floor box or baignoire, I saw all.”

“If you saw all, did you not see how the son of Pippand insulted me publicly?” said Monte Fato with a terrible calm.

“Listen to me. My son guessed you as well; he attributed to you the misfortunes that have stricken his father like the tomatoes that used to strike you when you ‘spoke poetry.’”

“Madame, you err,” said Monte Fato. “They are not misfortunes, but punishments. It is not I, but chance, if chance you call it, or a Power at work that is not the Power of the Ténébreux Seigneur, but of Érou and the Valards.”

“And why do you substitute yourself for the Valards?” cried Rosédès. “Why do you remember, when they choose to forget, preferring their golf-courses to the effort of observing the sordidities of Men? What does the vizier of Quirithe-Oungallant matter to you?”

“You are right, madame,” responded Monte Fato. “All that is an affair between the Arnorian captain and the daughter of Atterlobiki, and if I have sworn to avenge myself, it is not on the Arnorian captain, nor the Count de Pérégrin; it is on the fisher Pippand, the husband of Rosédès.”

“Ah monsieur!” cried the countess. “What a terrible vengeance for a fault that fatality caused me to commit! For the fault is mine, Samouard, if I did not have the strength to withstand your absence and my isolation.”

“But why was I absent?” cried Monte Fato. “Why were you isolated? Why was I a prisoner? It was not out of justice that I was held captive; that is not even one of Pippand’s faults.”

“I do not know,” said Rosédès.

“Oui, madame, you do not know, or so I hope, at the least,” said the Count. “Well, I will tell you. I was arrested because a hobbite named Sacqueville-Danglars wrote a letter that the fisher Pippand took upon himself to deliver by mail.”

And he went to a secretary and opened a drawer whence he took a paper that had lost its former color, and whereof the ink had become the hue of rust, and he showed it to Rosédès. It had been slashed and stabbed and partly burned, and it was stained with black Haradric coffee and other dark marks that looked like old blood or incredibly exotic and expensive wine, so that little of it could be read; but it was still recognisable as the letter Sacqueville-Danglars had written to the steuard du roi.

Rosédès read with horror the following lines:

“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.”

“The result of this letter, as you know, madame, was my arrest,” continued the Count. “But what you could not know is how long my imprisonment endured. I remained a quarter of a league from you in the Château de Locqueholles for fourteen years, the period, I note, wherein Trolquien composed the Sketches on the Amours of the Elves and Ents, or a Fanguirle’s Delight. Every day of those fourteen years, I renewed my oath of vengeance, and yet I did not know that Pippand had married you nor that my father had died of hunger!”

“The Eagles! The Eagles!” cried Rosédès.

“So, on leaving prison, my days though less dark were no less laborious. I swore on my dead father and on the living Rosédès to be avenged on Pippand, and … I am avenged. What the hobbites and Ala-Pallando and the captains of the West, betrayed by him, could not accomplish, that I have achieved.”

“Take vengeance, Samouard, but on the guilty!” cried the poor mother. “Avenge yourself on him, avenge yourself on me; but do not take revenge on my son!”

“It is written in the Silmarillion: ‘The sins of fathers will fall upon their descendants, up to the third and fourth generation,” said the Count. “Shall I be better than Érou and the Valards?”

“Samouard,” replied Rosédès, extending her arms towards the Count. “Samouard, since I have known you I have adored your name, spelt or spoken though it may not be because of its Sharcoléonist associations; I have honoured your memory. Samouard, my friend, do not force me to tarnish this pure and noble image reflected without cease in the mirror of my heart as the expensive clothes of Mme. Durin-Graz-Schneiffel in the waters of Quélède-Zarâme. Samouard, if you knew all the prayers I uttered on your behalf, when I believed you dead, yes, dead! I believed you buried in the foundations of some sombre tower like Barad-dour but without the simple elegance of its construction, I believed your body precipitated to the depths of one of those abysms where jailers let roll the cadavers of dead prisoners, and whence balrogue seeks to fly in vain; and I wept! Each night for ten years I have dreamt the same dream, wherein you covered yourself with the shroud of some deceased prisoner, and had been tossed from the castle parapet, and being whelmed by a dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, darkness unescapable. Samouard, criminal though I be, I too have suffered!”

“Have you seen your father die of hunger and the woman you loved extend her hand to his rival while you groaned in the abyss?” cried Monte Fato, tearing his hair.

“No,” interrupted Rosédès. “But I have seen him whom I loved ready to become the murtherer of my son!”

The lion was tamed; the Orc was bathed; the dwargue was shaved; the hobbite was taught to have a more subtle sense of humour; the Ent was trimmed into a hedge; the Eagle was pomaded; the Troll was taught netiquette; the FAQ was rewritten; the avenger was conquered.

“What do you wish? That your son live?” said he. “Very well; he shall live!”

Rosédès uttered a cry that made two tears swell from the Eye of Monte Fato, but these tears vanished immediately, having doubtless been collected by Luthienne or one of the Valards, perhaps Nienne; for far otherwise precious were they than the Silmarils of the Noldaux or the Rings of Célebrimbeur.

“Samouard,”said Rosédès. “I have but one more word to say to you.”

The Count smiled bitterly.

“Samouard,” she continued. “You will see that if my face is become pale and mine eyes have lost their lustre, if my beauty is lost, if Rosédès in short no longer resembles herself in the traits of her visage, it is always the same heart! Farewell, then, Samouard, and may your eyrie meet you at your journey’s end; I have nothing more to ask of heaven, for I have seen you as great and noble as aforetime. Farewell, Samouard; farewell and thank you!”

But the Count made no answer. She had disappeared before he awoke from his rêverie, and said, “What a fool I was, when I swore vengeance, not to tear out my heart!”

~~~

It was seven o’clock in the morning, at the appointed place in the forêt d’Escary. The Count was rather lackadaisically listening to Morrie’s suggestion that he merely turn Réginard into a wraith instead of killing him, and Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, who along with Château-Renard served as Pérégrin’s second, was regretting all the strains of tobacco he had not yet succeeded in introducing to Réginard. De Brie and Arafrantz were also present as witnesses. Morrie and Armalvéguil served as seconds for the Count.

“Messieurs,” said Morrie to Réginard’s seconds. “The Count declares that he has renounced his right to use the Ring to reduce you to rubble on this occasion.”

“We were prepared for this delicacy on the part of the Count, monsieur Morrie,” replied Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. ”And I have brought weapons that I found in a troll-boutique a little over a week ago, to compensate for the fact that they had no good tobacco.”

Finally, Réginard came riding on the pony Gras-Lompequin.

As he descended, they saw that he was pale, with red swollen eyes strangely reminiscent of Vau-de-mort. One saw that he either had not slept a second that night, or had become evil. His entire physiognomy was marked by a sad gravity that was not habitual to him.

“Merci, messieurs, for having consented to yield to my invitation, and to you as well, M. Morrie,” said he. “I am one could not be more grateful of this mark of friendship.”

“Monsieur Morrie,” said Château-Renard, “you can inform the Count that we are at his disposal.”

“Wait, messieurs,” said Réginard. “I have a few words I would like to address to the Count of Monte Fato in the presence of all.”

The Count advanced, accompanied by his seconds, the serenity of his visage forming a contrast to the tormented expression of Réginard.

“Monsieur,” said Réginard to the Count in a trembling voice that became surer as he proceeded, “I reproached you for having divulged the conduct of M. de Pérégrin in Quirithe-Oungallant, for, however guilty M. the Count de Pérégrin was, I did not believe that you had the right to punish him. But today, monsieur, I know that you have acquired that right. It is not the treachery of Pippand de Touc towards Ala-Pallando that renders me so ready to excuse you, but the treachery of the fisher Pippand towards you, and the unheard of misfortunes that followed upon that treason. Unnumbered tears indeed thou hast shed, and not deserved, as were those of Féanoir after he had insulted Yavanne’s taste in clothing because she liked to go clad in birch-bark. Thus I say, indeed, I proclaim it from the mountain tops as did Éonve on admiring Éarendeau’s shoe polish: you were right to take vengeance on my father, and I thank you for having done no more!”

The thunder, fallen in the midmost of the spectators of this unexpected scene like the bolt hurled by the Valards in the middle of Morgot’s most sumptuous ball, would not have astonished them more than this declaration of Réginard. As for Monte Fato, his Eye was raised to the utmost west in an expression of infinite gratitude, and he could not enough admire how the fiery, indeed almost balrogic nature of Réginard, whose courage he had witnessed in a nest of orcs, had so suddenly bent itself to this humiliation. He also recognised the influence of Rosédès, and saw how much greater was her noble heart than the power of any rings.

“Now, monsieur,” said Réginard, “if you find the excuses I have given sufficient, your hand, I beg. After the merit of infallibility that seems to be yours, the greatest of merits, in my opinion, is that of avowing when one is in the wrong. An aïnou alone could have saved one of us from certain death, and one is descended from the grounds of Valineur to give us, if not friendship – hélas, fate has rendered that impossible! – at least mutual esteem.”

Monte Fato, the Eye humid, the bosom heaving, the Ring looking highly unfashionable, extended to Réginard a hand that the latter seized and pressed with a sentiment that resembled awe.

Monte Fato, for his part, thought neither of Réginard nor of anyone present, but of that courageous woman who had come to ask him for the life of her son and had repaid it by the terrible avowal of a family secret, capable to slay for ever within the young hobbite the sentiment of filial piety.

~~~

The news of the dénouement of the duel between Réginard and Monte Fato took the astonished monde by storm, as if the famous flood of Bélériande had bedrunkened the entire society with Elvish champagne. It was not long before knowledge of it came to the Count de Pérégrin. Immediately, he took a carriage and sped towards the palais of the Count of Monte Fato with a haste greater than that of Saéroux, who, humiliated when Turin had spilt dwarf-beer on his new cravat, ran forth from the soirée without his hat.

Heedless of M. de Pérégrin, Réginard, who had decided he must take a journey there and back again in order that his sullied name might be made clean, directed himself towards his mother’s chambers, and, the heart swelling from what he saw and what he guessed, stopped on the threshold.

As if a single soul had animated two persons, Rosédès was doing the same as Réginard had been doing chez lui. Everything was in order: laces, jewellery, linen, money, dragon-fighting gear, were all arranged in the bottom of the drawers, whereof the Countess assembled carefully the keys.

“Mother, what are you doing?” he cried.

“What were you doing?” she replied.

“O my mother!” cried Réginard, moved to the point of not being able to speak. “It is not of you as it is of me! No, you cannot have resolved as I have decided, to leave home and fight a dragon, accompanied by Arafrantz and a few dwarves. and then carry heavy arks of untold wealth homeward! The house might be auctioned when you return, and then where will you dwell?”

“I too am leaving,” said Rosédès. “I was counting, indeed, that my son would accompany me; was I mistaken?”

“My mother,” said Réginard with firmness, “you cannot share this destiny. You have no errand in the Midi.”

“Say not, so, my son,” said Rosédès. “You will break all my resolutions.”

“But not mine, mother,” said Réginard. “I am strong, I am young, and slaying a dragon can hardly be more difficult than eating only three meals a day or counting the number of orcs one had slain, which was almost a rite of passage at my lycée. And since yesterday, I have learned what will can do. There are beings who have suffered worse fates than to be lost in the cavern of a dragon, and not only are not dead, but have amassed fortunes and acquired Rings of unlimited power. From the abysm where their enemy had plunged them, they have risen again with so much éclat and glory that they have dominated their former victor and precipitated him in his turn. No, my mother, no, I will break with the past, abandoning even my name, whereon a curse seems to lie; for your son must not bear the name of a man who must blush before every other man! I’ll be Pérégrin no more.”

“Heed your conscience, my son,” said Rosédès. ”But do not despair, in the name of your mother! Life is still beautiful at your age, son, for you have barely thirty-three years; and as a heart as pure as yours needs a name without blemish, take that of my father, Cotolon. I know you, Réginard; and in a little time, you will make this name illustrious. This only do I ask: that thou let me ride with this company.”

“I will do according to your wishes, my mother,” said the young hobbite. “And with your hope, I will hope. But since we have resolved, let us act promptly, before M. de Pérégrin returns.”

“I await you,” said Rosédès.

At this moment, Roguccio arrived with a letter from the Count of Monte Fato. Réginard read it; then, with tears in his eyes, the bosom swelling with emotion, he handed the letter to Rosédès. Rosédès read:

“Réginard,

In showing you that I have penetrated your design to save the escargot supply of Arnor from the depredations of the Dragon and thus restore your reputation, indeed cover it with glory, I wish to show you that I also understand delicacy and sensitivity. Voilà, you are free, you are leaving the hotel of the count, and you are taking your mother with you. But reflect, Réginard, that you owe her more than you can repay. Leave to yourself the dangers, the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch. For her the peaceful but glorious task awaits of putting the dragon’s lair in order, that the abominably bad taste of the overgrown lizard may not triumph over comme il faut.

“Remember that your mother does not merit even the reflection of misfortune that strikes her today, and that Manvre does not will that the innocent should suffer for the guilty. For, as I can tell you from experience, to hunt a dragon is not cheap, and I know that you are taking no wealth from Palais Baguechotte. Do not ask how I know this; accept the truth that my Eye sees all.

“Listen, Réginard. Twenty-four years ago, I returned joyful and proud to my fatherland. I had a fiancée, Réginard, a holy young woman whom I adored, and I was bringing for my fiancée wealth amassed laboriously by work without rest. This money was for her, I had destined it for her, and knowing how treacherous is the sea, I had buried our treasure under the Party Tree in the little garden of my father’s house in Hobbitonne.

“Eh bien, Réginard, this money that formerly was to aid the woman I adored, voilà today, by a marvellous chance, or the design of Luthienne, whose needlework was indeed almost as famous as her illicit affairs, serves the same purpose.

“Do not be blinded by pride or resentment; do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart.”

Rosédès looked to heaven with an ineffable expression, and said, “I accept; he has the right to pay the dowry I will spend in a dragonnade.”

~~~

Having accompanied his seconds home, the Count returned to his palais, where he was murmuring “Mon Précieux” when the Roi des sorciers opened the door and announced “The Count de Pérégrin!”

“Conduct M. de Pérégrin to the salon,” commanded the Count.

The Count de Pérégrin had known, of course, about his son’s appointment to meet Monte Fato in an affair of honour, and had eagerly awaited news of its dénouement. So it was that, on returning home, Réginard apperceived his father looking out for his return behind a curtain, and turned his head away. Knowing that the insult Réginard had given Monte Fato had been terrible, and that among all the free people of the world, nay, even the Orcs, such an insult entailed a duel to the death, he supposed, on seeing Réginard return safe and sound, that he was avenged against Monte Fato. An éclair of ineffable joy illumined that lugubrious visage. But he awaited in vain that his son mount to his apartment to render an account of his triumph. It was then that the count sent for Réginard’s domestic, and learned everything. In ten minutes, one saw the Count de Pérégrin appear on the steps, clad in a black redingote with a military collar, black pantaloons, black gloves, and looking uncommonly like a wraith; one had almost expected him to fiddle with a Ring or start singing the ring aria from Elrossini’s opera Saurone, ossia l’equivoco amoroso, ossia l’inutile precauzione, perché avrebbe dovuto uccidere gli obbiti e lasciare stare quei buonperniente dei gondorreani che non importano un fico. He had evidently given anterior orders, for he was met immediately by a carriage, which took him to Champs-Valinorées, where the Count of Monte Fato’s palais was easily recognised by the high pillar in Corinthian style, whose base depicted a volcano, and which was surmounted by a revolving Eye.

M. de Pérégrin himself opened the carriage door, and, the wheels of the carriage still rolling, he leapt like a young hobbite onto the pavement, rang, entered the palais with his domestic, and was announced to the Count.

M. de Pérégrin was pacing the entire length of the salon for the third time, when he apperceived the Count of Monte Fato standing on the threshold.

“Eh! It’s M. de Pérégrin,” said Monte Fato. ”I thought I had misunderstood.”

“Yes, it is I!” said the Count de Pérégrin in a hoarse voice.

“It remains for me to enquire why I have the honor of seeing M. de Pérégrin so early,” said Monte Fato. “You cannot have yet had your second breakfast.”

“Nor my first, monsieur. I have well other concerns at the moment. You had an encounter this morning with my son, monsieur?” said Pérégrin.

“As you can see, he did not kill me, or even fight,” said Monte Fato.

“And nevertheless, he regarded you as the cause of his father’s dishonor, as the cause of that horrible ruin that, at this moment, overwhelms my house worse than the wave that, before destroying the Empire of Numéneur, ruined the royal grounds at Méneltarme, so that they were a shocking sight.”

“It is true, monsieur,” said Monte Fato with his terrible calm. “Secondary, indeed, and not principal cause, as Gandault remarked of Bilbon and the Great Charade.”

“I have indeed come here for this purpose, to tell you that I regard you as my enemy!” said M. de Pérégrin. “I am come to tell you that I hate you by instinct! And that it seems as if I have always known you, always hated you! And that, in the end, since the young people of this age no longer fight, preferring no doubt to imbibe their ‘proper 1820’ instead, it is for us to fight! Fight to the death!” Pérégrin’s teeth were grit with rage.

“Bah!” said Monte Fato with his usual phlegm, such as drove many nations to despair, and led to the evacuation of the Entouives. “Let us see. Are you not the soldier Pippand who deserted on the eve of the Battle of Byouatier? Are you not the lieutenant Pippand who served as a spy and guide in the wars of Boucquelande? Are you not the colonel Pippand who betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor Ala-Pallando? Thankless fosterling, outlaw, slayer of your friend, thief of love, usurper of the Chambre des moutants, captain foolhardy, and deserter of your kin! And have not all these Pippands united to create the lieutenant-general Count de Pérégrin?”

“OH!” cried the general, whom each of these words struck like a hot iron. “Oh wretch! Thou reproachest my shame at the very moment when perhaps thou wilt slay me! Thou hast penetrated the night of my past, demon, and hast read there by the light of I know not what flame every page of my life! But perhaps there is more honor in me in the midst of my opprobrium than in thee with thy pompous exterior. I am known to thee, but thee I do not know, adventurer besown with gold and gems, vainglorious ringlord, wise fool, Monte Fato the Base Master of Treachery and Tasteless Ostentation! In Annuminas, you call yourself the Count of Monte Fato; in the South, Éarendeau le marin; among the Dwarves, Fornwangler-Schucks-Zirackziegel-von-und-zu-Nogrodt-Belgondt; in Morie, what do I know? I’ve forgotten. But it’s thy real name that I demand, it’s your true name I want to know, in the midst of thy hundred names, more than Arroroute boasted in the days of his prolixity, so that I may pronounce it on the field of combat when I plunge my épée into thy heart!”

The Count of Monte Fato became horribly pale; his fauve Eye flared up with a devouring fire; he lifted his Ring, and behold! In an instant he was transformed, and appeared before his astonied foe in the guise of a sailor clad in the style Gondor. The general recoiled until he found a table whereon to rest his nervous hand.

“Pippand!” cried Monte Fato. “Of my hundred names, I only need tell thee one in order that thou be stricken with a thunderbolt! But my true name, thou guessest it, do you not? Or rather, thou rememberest it? For, despite all my chagrins and tortures, I show thee today a visage rejuvenated by the joy of vengeance, a face thou must often have seen in thy dreams after thy marriage … with Rosédès, my fiancée!”

Pérégrin, the head turned back, the hands extended, the regard fixed, devoured this horrible spectacle in silence; then, supporting himself against the wall, he slid slowly to the door whereby he went out backwards, letting escape only a single cry, lugubrious, lamentable, rending the air like the cry of some lonely and evil creature, rising and falling, and ending on a piercing shriek like a poor tenor whose career was drastically and mercifully cut short, chilling the blood to a temperature whereat no balrogue would drink it : “Samouard Gamgès!”

He traversed the court like a drunken man, and fell into the arms of his valet, murmuring, “To the hotel!”

A few paces from the hotel, the count called a halt and exited the carriage. Two persons were descending the stairway; he only just had time to throw himself into a cabinet to avoid them. They passed two spans from the unhappy hobbite, who, hidden behind a damask curtain, felt a breeze from the silken gown of Rosédès, and felt the rumour on the air of these words pronounced by his son: “Courage, my mother; we are no longer chez nous here.”

The words were extinguished, the steps moved away.

The general clung to the curtain; he uttered the most horrible sob of a father abandoned at once by his wife and his son…

Then sped he to his most secret armoire, and took therefrom the épée Gourthand that Monte Fato had given him in an offhand sort of way, and bespake it thus: “Hail, Gourthand, monsieur, iron of death, you alone remain, and most fittingly art in a style that hath completely gone out of fashion, for no one forges swords wherein the dark heart of the smith yet dwells anymore. What lord or loyalty or political ideology or doctrine of political economy do you know, save the hand that wields you? From no blood will you shrink. Will you take Pippand Touc? Will you slay me swiftly?”

And from the blade rang a cold voice with an exotic accent that mispronounced the j sound in answer: “Yes, I will drink your blood, that I may forget the blood of Bélègue my master, and of the Scarlet Pimpernel slain unjustly, and the poor champagne wherein your son drenched me for a jeu d’esprit. I will slay thee swiftly.”

Then Pippand set the hilts upon the ground, and cast himself upon the point of Gourthand, and the black blade took his life.

†This was the Firienbourg Palace, built in the sixteenth century of the Tierce époque for Theodwynne de Rohan, in the Rohirric style, by Salomon de Brie, after the fashion of the Palazzo Pucchelmanni.