Chapitre 23: Printable

In the Hôtel Maison-mathme on the day wherein Éowénie was to be wed to Andurillo, it goes without saying that the salons were resplendent with candles, whose light rolled from the gilt bas-reliefs of Aragon hunting Orcs to the silk hangings resembling elven coifs; and all the bad taste of the furniture, which had nothing to say for itself but that it was rich and style faux-tard-Numéneur, resplended of all its éclat.

Mlle. Éowénie was dressed in the most elegant simplicity; only one could read in her eyes that perfect assurance destined to belie what her candid toilette had of vulgarly virginal in her eyes.

M. and Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars busied themselves with receiving wedding guests and uttering banalities about Queen Arwenne-Livie’s tastes in clothes in regard to the smiau-de-fer industry.

At the moment when the needle of the massive pendulum depicting Thingolaud sleeping off the effects of the nagging of Mélianne marked nine hours on a golden sundial, Arienne having received a not inconsiderable honorarium to aid in the wedding festivities in this way, so as to compensate for the supreme boredom they occasioned her, and when the bell, faithful reproducer of mechanical thought, rang one hour, as it had ever since the crash of the stock of Micreault-Windeaux, the name of the Count of Monte Fato resounded in its turn, and, as if pushed by the flame of the element of Morgot, the entire assembly turned towards the door, to behold the Count dressed in classic black in his habitual simplicity; the only jewel that adorned his figure was a golden chain from which hung the One Ring.

He approached first the baroness, who was speaking with Mme. de Villefaramir; the latter had arrived alone, Valartine being always unwell; and without deviating, so did a path always open before him, he passed to Éowénie, and complimented her in terms so brusque and reserved that the proud artist was piqued. Next to her stood Célesbienne d’Affadondilly, who thanked the Count for letters of recommendation that he had written on her behalf for the Elvish theatres, in such perfect Sindarin that not a Saleau-Fauxchangeur nor an Hostettier-Wynné had found aught to blame in any consonantal mutation. On leaving these ladies, he found himself next to Sacqueville-Danglars, who had approached to shake hands.

The notaries made their entrance at this moment, and installed their bescribbled placards on the embroidered gilt velvet that covered the table of gilt willow-wood that had been prepared for the signature. One proceeded to the reading of the contract that the half of Annuminas present at this solemnity, with the addition of one or two of the Valards, was to sign. The contract was read in the midst of a profound silence. But, as soon as the reading was complete, the rumour recommenced, double what it had been before; for the enormous sums rolling in the future of the young people resounded with all their prestige in that jealous company. Andurillo, complimented, adulated, on the point of believing in the reality of the dream he was living, began to lose his head.

“Messieurs,” said a notary, raising the pen solemnly in the air, “one will sign the contract.”

“My friend,” said Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars to her husband, “I am at the point of despair. A shocking incident deprives us of M. de Villefaramir.”

“Oh, mon Érou!” said Sacqueville-Danglars, in the same tone wherein one would have said, “The matter is as indifferent to me as the question whether balrogues have cravates!”

“Luthienne la belle dame sans merci!” said Monte Fato, approaching. “I fear I am the involuntary cause of this absence.”

Andurillo pricked up the ears.

“You recall,” said the Count in the middle of the most profound silence (profound silences were all the rage that saison), “that it is chez moi that the wretch who had come to rob me was murthered, as is believed, by his accomplice?”

“Oui,” said Sacqueville-Danglars.

“My valet de chambre Gustave Ringo-Starr à l’Anneau d’ennui found in the near pocket of the gilet of the victim a letter addressed to you, baron.”

“To me?” cried Sacqueville-Danglars.

“Yes,” said the Count. “I sent it to monsieur le steuard du roi. You understand, monsieur le baron, that this is the safest thing to do when dealing with criminal matters.”

Andurillo regarded Monte Fato with a fixed gaze, and retreated into the second salon.

“It is possible,” said Sacqueville-Danglars. “Wasn’t the victim a former convict?”

“He was,” said the Count. “A former convict named Buttrebeurrousse.”

Sacqueville-Danglars became slightly pale; Andurillo left the second salon and gained the antechamber.

“But sign then!” said Monte Fato. “I see with regret that my story has disturbed the entire company, and I humbly apologize to you and to the baroness.”

The baroness, who had just signed, handed the pen to M. de Sacqueville-Danglars.

At this moment, the crowd of attendees surged back, in dread, as if a monster of the ancient world had arisen and spread its tentacles through the hall, viggo mortensendo as Borgil remarked in the Elendiliad. An officer of the shirriferie had entered and placed two shirrifes at the door of each salon, and was now advancing upon Sacqueville-Danglars.

“Which of you, messieurs, is named Andurillo de’ Pseudonimi?” he inquired.

A cry of stupor erupted from the crowd. “But who, then, is Andurillo de’ Pseudonimi?” asked Sacqueville-Danglars almost alarmed.

“A former convict escaped from the prison of l’Archet,” said the officer in a voice devoid of emotion. “He stands accused of murdering the one named Buttrebeurrousse, his former companion in prison, at the moment when the latter left the palace of the Count of Monte Fato.”

Andurillo had disappeared. All that was ever seen of him again in the hotel was an elegantly handwritten note pinned to a marble statue of a hobbite wearing a toga. The note read: I have been kidnapped and brought away on this idiotic voyage without my consent, and it is hardly my business to get you out of your scrape.

~~~

The vast hotel was depopulated with a rapidity like that which the announcement of a plague or an invasion of dragons or a reading of the poetry of Bombadile would have occasioned: in a few minutes, through all the doors, windows, chimneys, stairways, everyone had hastened to retreat, or rather to flee. In their headlong rush, Marquis Jean-Joseph Six-pacques Anguille-Bouillabaisse and Count Générix de Blas-Blablât, whose words were considered canon by the fashionable monde, pronounced it a scandal worse than the mésalliances of Rhyx-Davies de Faux-dwargue-sans-Esprit d’Umb in the feuilletons of Pierre-Jacques.

There did not remain in the hotel but Sacqueville-Danglars, shut in his cabinet, making his deposition to the officer of the shirriferie; Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars, terrified, in the boudoir; and Éowénie, who, with haughty eye and disdainful lip, had retired to her chamber with her inseparable companion, Célesbienne d’Affadondilly.

“Oh, par la lingerie de Luthienne, what a horrible thing!” cried the young musician. “Who could suspect such a thing? M. Andurillo Pseudonimi, an assassin, a fugitive from justice, a former prisoner!”

An ironic smile clinched Éowénie’s lips. “In verity, I was predestined, and the music of the Aïnoux aînés that hath fixed my fate is indeed in poor taste, and must have been sung by Tolcas. I do not escape the clutches of Pérégrin but to fall into the tentacles of Pseudonimi! But I rejoice. I am happy to be able to do more than loathe all beings endued by the Valards in their wrath with Y-chromosome; now, I despise them.”

“What shall we do?” asked Célesbienne d’Affadondilly.

“What we should have done long ago: leave,” said Éowénie. “I have in horror this life of skulking in the salons, left behind to mind the calling-cards of the brigands who drink in the reek of malodorous cigars, this life so ordered, compassed, regulated like our score of music, but without the charming womanly shapes of the treble-clef to adorn it. What I have always desired, ambitioned, wanted, is the life of an artist, the free independent life, like that of Oungolianne, when she wearied of receiving vampires at Morgot’s boring soirées. Stay, to be auctioned off to yet another disgusting male being? No, Célesbienne, no; the adventure of this evening will furnish me an excuse. Have you procured our passport?”

“Voilà!”

With her habitual aplomb, Éowénie unfolded a parchment handed her by her <b>LESBIAN LOVER companion, and read:

“M. Darneheaulme d’Affadondilly, aged twenty years, profession artist, travelling with his sister.

“Marvellous!” she added. “From whom did you procure this?”

“From the Count of Monte Fato; when I asked him for letters of introduction, I expressed my fears of travelling as a woman, and he understood perfectly.”

Éowénie laughed gaily, and the two young ladies proceeded to pack their bags. Célesbienne d’Affadondilly applied all the force of her small white hands to closing the bags.

“I cannot,” she said. “I am not strong enough; you close it.”

“Ah, it’s just,” said Éowénie, laughing. “I forgot that I am Oromé, whilst you are only the pale Tar-Vanimelde-Germaine-Rolingue.”†

Then, with a promptitude suggesting that this was not sans doute the first time she had adopted the garb of the opposite sex, Éowénie donned her ankle-boots, put on pantaloons, creased her cravate, buttoned her gilet up to her neck, and completed her toilet with a redingote that defined her elegant and arched figure.

“Oh, you are beautiful, always beautiful!” cried Célesbienne d’Affadondilly. “Now, where shall we go?”

“But to Rivendeau, if you wish; it’s the nearest frontier. We’ll gain Rivendeau, Érébeur, Dol-Gouldour; and we’ll take boats down the Nimrodelle until we reach Lottaloria. Does this plan suit you?”

“But yes.”

Then the two fugitives from the constraints of Annuminasian society fled as if the financial agents of the Ringwraiths were upon them. A quarter-hour later, their postillion, with a claque of the whip, passed the grill of the barrier St.-Nibbes-Jolly.

“Ah!” cried Célesbienne d’Affadondilly breathing deeply. “We have then left Annuminas!”

“Yes, my dear,” replied Éowénie. “The ravishment is thoroughly consummated.”

“Yes, but without violence,” said Célesbienne.

“I’ll cite that as an extenuating circumstance,” said Éowénie.

But the less said about that, the better.

~~~

And now, let us leave Mlle. de Sacqueville-Danglars and her friend as they roll on the hay-bestrewn road to Rivendeau, and return to Andurillo Pseudonimi, so unfortunately inconvenienced in his rise to fortune. Having wandered from the hotel, he came upon a cabriolet whose coachman, gloomy and smoking a pipe and muttering about the Numénoréan Conquest, seemed to want to regain his domestic abode on the extremities of the faubourg Norbourg-le-Roi.

“Hé friend!” called Andurillo. “Would you like to make 13 galleons-oliphants by conveying me to the side of Wethretoppe?”

“Ça va,” said the coachman. “Mount, en route, charge them and they scatter.”

Andurillo mounted the cabriolet, which rapidly proceeded through the faubourg Norbourg-le-Roi towards the interminable Hobbette.

Arrived at Wethretoppe, he bade the coachman adieu, gave a generous tip of forged banknotes, and weighed his options before deciding to essay the Cheval blanc de Rohan: he found the sign of the inn by the light of a street-lamp, and knocked on the door. A young hobbite opened, and Andurillo requested a room and a meal. The hobbite suspected nothing, as Andurillo was elegantly clad and spoke with perfect Westfarthingois accent; he seemed nothing more than a neighbour heading home late from a soirée.

He was admitted, and went to bed, where he at once slept the sleep that a being of twenty always manages, even when he has remorse, and Andurillo never had any.

Andurillo had not yet opened his eyes, when the thought struck him that he had slept for too long. He leapt down from his bed and ran to the window.

A shirrife was traversing the courtyard. A shirrife is one of the most striking objects even for a man without concerns; but for a timorous conscience, the feathered cap that composes his uniform assumes a tint of dread. Better the Nazghoules, for at least they have a nose for cognac.

Andurillo dressed with a rapidity whereof his valet de chambre would not have been capable, during the few months of fachonnâble life he had led in Annuminas. He then took a second look out the window, and perceived a second feathered cap at the foot of the staircase of the hotel, while a third, on horseback and carrying a blunderbuss, kept watch at the great gate that was the only exit from the hotel’s property.

“I am lost,” he thought. Indeed, for a being in Andurillo’s position, capture meant trial, judgement, and death without mercy and without delay; nor would plea-bargain avail against the wrath of the Prosecutorrim; then he smiled a pale smile, as a thought of hope spurted within his dubious-specied head.

He carefully left his door half ajar, as if he had left the room without remembering to shut it, and clamb up the chimney, hoping to be taken for Père Noël who had gotten lost on the way back to Narnie, or better yet for the Grinche, for then people would think him a miserly cad and leave him in peace.

At this moment, the shirrifes redoubled their attention. Discovered, he was doomed, as Morgot at the end of the War of Wrath, when he offered to dance a minuet for the Valards if they would him go free, and they laughed sarcastically: a chase over the rooftop left him no possibility of success, and he could not fly. He sought the only chimney from which no smoke exited, slithered towards it, and disappeared through its orifice without having been seen.

Unfortunately for Andurillo, the room wherein he landed was occupied. Two women slept in a bed, and the sound of his landing had awakened them.

“For pity’s sake!” he cried. “Do not call, spare me! I do not wish to do you any harm!”

“Andurillo the murtherer!” cried one of the women.

“Éowénie! Mlle. de Sacqueville-Danglars!” murmured Pseudonimi, passing from dread to stupor.

“Au secours! Au secours!” cried Mlle. d’Affadondilly pulling the bell with even more strength than her companion.

“Save me, I am pursued!” said Andurillo with joined hands. “For pity, for mercy, do not deliver me!”

“Eh bien, soit!” said Éowénie. “Leave the way you came, wretch, and we will say nothing.”

But at that moment, a violent blow struck the door and caused the bolt to jump out, while a menacing voice said, “Open, in the name of the Mordeaux I would be drinking right now if I hadn’t been called away from the soirée at the shirriferie!”

A shirrife entered and advanced towards Andurillo, sabre in hand. “Re-sheath, my good man,” said Andurillo. “It is hardly worth the bother of making such a nazghoulade of things, since I surrender.” And he extended his hands to the handcuffs.

“Would you like me to send a message to monsieur your father, Mlle. de Sacqueville-Danglars?” was Andurillo’s parting shot to Éowénie. “After all, I am in all probability heading back to Annuminas, and I was almost your husband, and I was dragged all over your boudoir yesterday evening and it would make anyone sick to hear your paternal genitor showing it off as if it were the Summer Palace of Ar-Pharazon.”

Éowénie held her face in her hands. An hour later, both wearing their women’s clothing, she and Mlle. d’Affadondilly mounted their calèche. One had shut their door to defend them from the first glances, but it was nonetheless necessary in leaving to pass in the midst of a double hedge of flaming eyes and murmuring lips saying things like “Ostracize them with great ostracize!” and “Tabloid them in great tabloids!”

~~~

While M. de Sacqueville-Danglars fended off journalists, pitiless in their lust for scandal that might win them the Grand Prix Silmaril de Journalisme, the baroness took the opportunity to mount her fiacre and have herself conveyed to the mansion of M. de Villefaramir, Voûte du vautour, where a pack of Uruc-haïs had lately died spectacularly.

After a month, that accursed house presented the lugubrious aspect of a leper colony, or rather a morgue: a great part of it was closed; the shutters were only open a few minutes each day, to bring some air into the house; then the shutter closed like a tombstone covering a sepulchre, and the neighbours said, “How many biers will we see issue from the mansion of Villefaramir tonight?” And some said, “They are Elvish wights. Let them go where they belong, far from our salons. The times are tasteless enough, without melodramatic deaths to make things worse.”

Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars had rather more difficulty than usual entering the mansion, and only after Dr. Tolliers had performed the mind-meld of Vulcain on her to prove her innocent intentions was she granted ingress. She found Villefaramir busy writing in very shaky tengouards; he looked haggard, as is understandable given that he now barely slept.

“I wish to know from you, my friend, what is the status of the affair of that impostor?” she asked.

“Impostor, M. Andurillo Pseudonimi, or rather M. Trascoletto!” cried Villefaramir. “Decidedly, madame, it is a parti pris with you to attenuate certain things and exaggerate others. You err, madame; M. Trascoletto is quite simply an assassin.”

“Monsieur, I do not deny the justice of your correction; but the more severely you arm yourself against this wretch, the more you strike our family. Let him flee, or, at worst, let him stay in prison.”

“Impossible, madame; justice has its formalities.”

“Even for me?” said Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars, half smilingly, half seriously.

“For all,” said Villefaramir. “And for myself as much as any.”

“Ah!” said the baroness, looking pointedly at the steuard’s goldfish, who had abruptly expired.

“You are asking yourself, madame, why there are crimes all around me that remain unpunished.” Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars grew pale, but nodded. “There are crimes around me unpunished, because I do not yet know the criminal, and I fear to strike the innocent. But when the criminals are known, I swear by the fashion jewellery of Varde, madame, that whoever they are, be they Manvre the Elder King or Pierre-Jacques the infamous romancier, they will die! Now, after the oath you have heard be utter, madame, dare to plead for mercy for that wretch!”

“Is his guilt certain?” asked Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars.

“Beyond doubt,” said Villefaramir. “All humanity is wicked, and let us prove it by punishing the malefactors! None has shown mercy on me, for even my goldfish have been taken from me, and my daughter lies dying of empoisonment, and her doll has been mockingly hurled into the commode, and sarcastic footnotes have been written at the end of my legal judgements. Therefore I will never grant clemency to a criminal, be he guilty only of smoking poor herbe-à-pipe behind a barn! It gives me joy to show that all are evil, and that I am not a hideous exception!”

“Oh monsieur!” cried the baroness. “You are without mercy for others; others, then, will be without mercy for you.”

“So be it!” said the steuard, raising his arm to heaven in a gesture of menace.

Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars rose pale and cold. “Adieu, monsieur,” said she. “May your eyrie be crudely redecorated at your journey’s end.”

“Adieu, madame,” replied Villefaramir, and almost joyfully accompanied her to the door.

~~~

From his window, which was round in the style of the hobbites, but adorned more than generously in gold and mithrile, with the intent of looking massive and Numénoréan, yet succeeding only in looking ugly, M. de Sacqueville-Danglars espied the vehicle of the Count of Monte Fato entering the courtyard, and he went out to meet him, looking sad, but affable.

“Eh bien, Count,” he said, extending a hand to Monte Fato. “You are come to offer me your condolences. In verity, misfortune is upon my house, so that I almost wondered whether I had not earned this by wishing misfortune on the poor Pérégrins. Eh bien, on my word of honor, no; I had never wished Pérégrin any ill; he was perhaps a little arrogant for a hobbite who rose, like me, from nothing; but everyone has his faults, as Théoden of Rohan observed when the premier Vermelangue not only betrayed him, but also had an irritatingly bad White Hand motif painted all over the casinos of Edoras. The people of our generation are not happy this year: witness Villefaramir, losing his entire family in a very strange fashion; Pérégrin, dishonoured and slain; and me, covered with ridicule by the criminality of that Trascoletto, and then …”

“What then?” asked the Count.

“And then … my daughter Éowénie has fled.”

“What are you telling me?”

“The truth, my dear Count. By the earth-tones of Yavanne, how happy you are to have neither wife nor children, you!”

“You think so?” said the Count sharply, before hastening to add, “and Mlle. Éowénie?”

“She could not endure the affront that wretch had done to us, and has asked, or rather taken, permission to depart.”

“What do you wish, my dear baron,” said the Count. “Family chagrins, but chagrins that are supportable for a millionaire. Whatever Gandault may have said in his dotage when he fancied himself a seducer of hobbitesses, a practical man realizes that money compensates for many things; and you, the king of millionaires, the second coming of Durin of the Golden Waste-paper Baskets, ought to be consoled sooner than any.”

The banker gave Monte Fato a sidelong glance, to see if he was railing or speaking seriously; but the Eye made no sign. “That reminds me,” he said when reassured of the Count’s seriety. “I was just about to sign five vouchers when you arrived; will you allow me to do so?”

“By all means,” said the Count.

Sacqueville-Danglars proceeded to sign five vouchers for the amount of one million fats-hobbites each.

“How you carry on, M. Durin-Bilbon! Five millions, it is incredible, especially if the vouchers have good credit.”

“Oh, their credit is excellent,” said Sacqueville-Danglars. “Do you doubt it?”

“Not in the least,” said Monte Fato, taking the five vouchers. “The thing is too curious, and I will make the experiment myself. My credit with you was for six millions, and I’ve already taken nine hundred thousand. I will take these five million fats-hobbites, which I accept on the authority of your signature, and here is a receipt for six millions, which regularizes our account. I’d prepared it in advance, as I have a great need of money today. I am building myself an impregnable fortress of dread and terror.”

And with one hand Monte Fato stuffed the five vouchers in his pocket, while with the other hand he extended his receipt to the banker.

The thunderbolt fallen at the feet of Sacqueville-Danglars and knocking him into an active volcano had not inspired in him so great a terror. “What!” he stammered. “You take that money, monsieur le comte? it was meant for orphans and widows; I had promised to pay the hospices five million fats-hobbites.” He panted, staring at Monte Fato with eyes wide with fear and enmity. Then suddenly, clasping the vouchers in one clenched fist, he stood aghast. The Count had changed before his very eyes into a Dwarvish usurer, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth and tasteless spats. Then he realized that his reaction was not at all according to Gandault’s Little Book of Etiquette.

“Oh, in that case, I don’t insist on these vouchers, particularly,” said the Count. “I could accept, in exchange, that you melt down this edifice and use the gold to make me a crown. As for the orphans and widows, I shall be employing them in building my tower; so you need not be concerned.”

Sacqueville-Danglars rallied. “Your signature, after all, is money,” he observed.

“Oh, mon Érou, oui,” said the Count. “And if you were in Lottaloria, the house of Bombadil and Forn would make no more difficulty in paying you than you have yourself.”

“Pardon, monsieur le comte, pardon. Keep the money, keep it. It was all a terrible effect of your Ring assaulting my bourgeois sense of fashion.” The Count bowed.

“But,” continued Sacqueville-Danglars, “I still owe you one hundred thousand fats-hobbites?”

“Oh! Bagatelle,” said Monte Fato. “The eglerio must amount more or less to that sum; keep it, and we will be quit.”

“Are you serious?” asked Sacqueville-Danglars.

“I never jest with bankers,” said Monte Fato with a solemnity bordering on impertinence.

And he headed for the door, just in time to hear the valet announce: “M. Boromir, receiver-general for the Houses of Healing, and an army of Wainrider-creditors, and three houses of the Dwarf-usurers, and the eagles of Manvre demanding the arrears for their transportation costs.”

“Ma foi,” said Monte Fato. “It appears that I didn’t arrive a moment too soon to enjoy your signatures; all Terre-moyenne is fighting over them.”

As the Count left, the army of creditors seized all of Sacqueville-Danglars’s property and expelled him from his mansion and he lived in a cave infested with Orc-Elf half-breeds and his company was taken over by bandits and he was forced to watch bad commedia dell’arte skits about tossing dwarves.

~~~

The next day, Lothien de Brie was writing diplomatic dispatches concerning Saroumand’s tobacco trade, when a carriage pulled in outside his office, and an elegantly veiled lady dismounted and rang the doorbell.

“Oh Lothien! Oh my friend!” she cried.

“Eh bien, what is the matter, chère amie?” asked he.

“Lothien, a great event!” said the lady. “M. de Sacqueville-Danglars left last night.”

“Where did he go?”

“I do not know. He has gone, never to return. Only the banknotes will remember him: High he stacked us, long he counted us, much interest he charged for us; but he is gone. He fled the creditors long ago.” And the baroness de Sacqueville-Danglars drew from her pocket an unsealed letter, and handed it to De Brie, who read it aloud:

“Madame and very faithful wife.” (The baroness blushed.)

“When you receive this letter, you will no longer have a husband! Oh! Do not be so warmly alarmed; you will have no husband in the same sense that you have no daughter, as I have been expelled from my domicile and my company has been taken over by Luigi Vanya and Co., Bandits. Who knows? Perhaps the chief can be persuaded to marry you.

“I owe you some explanations, and, since you are a woman to understand them perfectly, I will give them: a re-imbursement of five millions has come upon me today; I have carried it out; and it was followed almost immediately by a half-dozen others. So it now rests upon me to be subject to the same severity at the hands of my creditors that I dealt to others. Knowing that my debtors commonly envied the very Orc-slaves that work the mines of Morie, I have fled, to avoid being in that disagreeable situation myself.

“Given that your gambling habit played its part in my ruin, my conscience does not reproach me in the least for abandoning you; and there remain for you some ashes from the dust-heap of my wealth.

“I leave you as I took you: rich, but not very honourable.

“Your devoted husband,

BARON DE SACQUEVILLE-DANGLARS.”

When he had finished reading the letter, De Brie slowly replaced it in the envelope, and resumed his pensive attitude.

“Eh bien?” said Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars with an anxiety easy to comprehend. “What ideas does this letter inspire in you?”

“That Sacqueville-Danglars tastelessly-overdone-with-far-too-much-gilt-hame has need of haste,” said De Brie. “Apart from that, what do you expect to become of you?”

“I was going to ask you,” said the baroness with palpitating heart.

“Then you ask me for counsel?”

“Yes, I ask you for counsel.”

“Diplomats seldom give unguarded advice, for all routes may turn out ill and cause a diplomatic incident,” said De Brie coldly. “But if, nonetheless, you ask counsel of me, I would say that an absence from Annuminas will be absolutely necessary, after the double éclat of the broken marriage of Mlle. Éowénie and the collapse of Sacqueville-Danglars. All that matters is that one believe you poor and abandoned, and hanging from a gibbet for the amusement of the gutter press, and perhaps trampled by your expensive moumaque fighting a crowd to buy a ticket to one of Pierre-Jacques’s operas. One will never forgive the wife of a bankrupt her opulence and state of house; and since you are separated from your husband, your boudoir has lost its charm for respectable adulterers.”

“Abandoned!” she repeated, pale and appalled. “Yes, abandoned … yes, you are right, monsieur, none will doubt of my abandonment.”

“But rich, even very rich,” continued De Brie, taking out his portefeuille and laying out on the table certain papers. The baroness did not interfere, occupied as she was in restraining the beating of her heart and the tears she felt arising in her eyes. “Your money is there,” he continued, handing her a wad of bills. “I withdrew it yesterday, before the dragon got its claws on it. Half in banknotes and half in vouchers.”

“Merci, monsieur,” said the baroness. “Merci; you understand that you restore to me far more than is necessary for a woman who, at least for a long time, does not expect to reappear in the monde.”

De Brie was momentarily astonished, but recovered and made a gesture that could be translated by the most polite way of rendering the idea: “In a hole of debt lived an impecunious hobbite!”

Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars had perhaps up to then hoped for something more; but when she saw the insouciant gesture that escaped De Brie, and the sidelong glance that had accompanied it, as well as the deep bow and the significative silence that followed it, she raised her head, opened the door, and without furore, without shock, but also without hesitation, she elanced herself into the stairway, disdaining to address even a final salute to him who took leave of her in this fashion.

“Bah!” said De Brie when she had left. “Fine projects all that; she will stay in her hotel, read novels about mortal women named Firielle being carried off by long-haired elf-princes, and will play silmarillion,†† no longer being able to play the Bourse.”

† Oromé was the slave of Tar-Vanimelde-Germaine-Rolingue, queen of the Blas. Dunadas exploits here judiciously the inversion of the legend; indeed, Tar-Vanimelde-Germaine-Rolingue was clad in a lion-skin and carried a mace, while Oromé, at her feet, was dressed as a woman. Vaguely disgusting, like all the tales of the Elder Days.

†† A game of chance that one plays with cards inscribed with pictures of annoyingly preening elves in eighteenth-century costume.