As the steuard du roi had indicated to Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars, Valartine had not 

yet recovered. By order of Dr. Tolliers, she was kept under constant guard.

A nervous exaltation pursued her even in her sleep: in the silence of the night and the 

half-darkness allowed to reign by the night-light placed upon the mantelpiece, she saw 

passing those shadows that people the sick-room and which the fever shakes with its 

shuddering wings. 

Then, she seemed to see now her stepmother who threatened her, now Morrie who extended an 

arm to her, now beings almost foreign to her habitual life, such as Hostettier-Wynné 

the Elvish-language expert, Lord Frosty the notorious Snowbleman and risqué poet, and the Count 

of Monte Fato.

The evening after Valartine had learnt of the flight of Éowénie and the arrest of 

Trascoletto, ten minutes after her guard had retired for the night, the demoiselle, in prey

to that fever which returned each night, let her head, independently of her will, continue that 

active, monotonous, and implacable labor of the brain, which exhausts itself in repeating 

incessantly the same thoughts or in giving birth to the same images, resembling nothing so much as 

a debate of the Guerriers de flamme.† 

In this state, Valartine believed she saw the bookcase, situated beside the fireplace in a 

reinforcement of the wall, open slowly, without that the hinges whereon it seemed to roll 

produced the slightest noise.

At another moment, Valartine would have rung her bell to call for help; but nothing 

astonished her anymore in her current state. The conviction had grown upon her that, in the 

morning, no trace would remain of all these phantoms and ringwraiths and barrow-wights and critics 

of the night, who disappeared with the day like food at banquet of hobbites. 

Behind the door there appeared a human figure. Valartine opened her eyes, expecting to see 

Morrie; but it was not he.

She waited for the man to change into another person or disappear, as happens in dreams. 

Then she remembered that the best way to make these importune visions disappear was to 

drink; so she extended her hand to take the glass that rested on the crystal tray; but while 

she stretched from her bed her shaking arm, the apparition rapidly made two steps towards the 

bed, and arrived so near the girl that she felt the pressure of its hand, which had the purpose 

of restraining her arm.

This time the vision, or rather the reality, went far beyond all that Valartine had 

theretofore experienced; she began to believe herself full awake and alive; she was aware that

she enjoyed the faculty of her reason; and she shuddered.

Then this figure, whose regard could not be detached, and who moreover seemed more protective 

than menacing, took the glass and swallowed a spoonful of the beverage. He then briefly 

transformed into a giant pitcher that spake the words, “Oh yeah!”

Valartine beheld all that happened before her eyes with a profound sense of stupor. Instead 

of disappearing like a shadow or advertisement, the man (no longer a pitcher) approached 

Valartine and extended to her the glass. “Now drink!” he said, in a voice full of emotion. It 

was the first time one of her visions had spoken to her with living accent.

“M. le comte de Monte Fato!” she murmured.

“Do not call, do not be frightened,” said the Count. “Do not let the flicker of doubt or 

the shadow of suspicion enter even the bottom of your heart; the Ring-lord you see before you 

is the most respectful friend and the most tender father you can imagine.”

“Do you eat girls?” inquired Valartine, sounding almost intrigued. 

"I have swallowed up girls and boys, mesdames et messieurs, kings and emperors, cities and 

realms," said the Count, quoting the secret memoirs of Aslant. He did not say this as if he 

were boasting, nor as if he were sorry, nor as if he were angry.  He merely said it.

“Alack!” cried Valartine, aghast at this impropriety.

With his marvellous sagacity, the Count saw all that took place within the girl’s heart. 

“Hear, or rather, behold me,” he said. “See my reddened Eye and my visage yet paler than its 

wont: for four nights I have not closed my Eye for an instant, watching over you, to conserve 

you for our friend Meurtrier, lest the dreadful menace of the Society Lady that waited, brooding 

in sleepless malice behind the dark veil of her Toilet, overcome you at the last.”

The blood returned to Valartine’s cheeks at the mention of that name, which took from her

the last remains of the distrust the Count had inspired in her.

“Meurtrier!” repeated Valartine, so sweet she found that name to pronounce. “Meurtrier! 

Caro nome del mio coranor narquelie!” she trilled. “He has then revealed all to you?”

“All. He has told me that your life is his, and I have promised him that you will live.”

“You say you have watched?” said Valartine nervously. “Where? I have not seen you.”

The Count extended a hand in the direction of the bookcase. “I watched from behind that 

door,” he said. “The door leads to the neighbouring house, which I have rented. But of late 

I have watched from within this very room, concealing myself with my Ring.”

Valartine, by a movement of virginal pride, turned her eyes, and said, “Monsieur, what you 

have done is an unexampled madness, and the protection you accord me highly resembles an 

affront.”

“Valartine,” said he, “during this long vigil, all I have seen is: what people have visited 

you, what foods they prepared you, what drinks they gave you; then, when these drinks 

appeared dangerous to me, I substituted for the poison a beneficent drink, which, instead 

of death, made the blood circulate in your veins.”

“Poison! Death!” cried Valartine. “This remindeth me of a gothick noveleth or a tragic 

melodrama! What say you there then, monsieur?”

“Hush, my child!” said Monte Fato. “Yes, I have said poison and death, and I repeat it; but 

first, drink this.” The Count poured a reddish beverage into Valartine’s glass. Valartine 

held out her hand, then withdrew it in fright. Monte Fato, took the glass, drank half of it, 

and handed it back to Valartine, who smiled and swallowed the remainder. It was that 

sovereign remedy, in days of yore reserved to the Houses of Healing in Gondor, and called 

pounche de Hawaii in Parler Commun.

“Oh!” said she. “I recognise the taste of my nocturnal beverages, that restored some 

freshness to my bosom and calm to my mind. Merci, monsieur, merci, merci!”

“That is how you have lived for four nights,” said the Count. “But I, how did I live? Oh, 

the cruel, dreadful torments you have made me suffer, when I saw the deadly poison poured 

into your glass, when I trembled lest you have time to drink it ere I could empty it in the 

fireplace!”

“You say, monsieur,” replied Valartine, at the climax of terror, “that you have undergone 

a thousand tortures seeing deadly poison pouredeth into my glass? You must then have seen 

the person who poured it?”

“Oui.”

“What, monsieur!” said Valartine. “What! In my father’s house, on my bed of suffering, 

one continues to assassinate me! Oh, retire, monsieur, you tempt my conscience, you will 

make me believe something infernal, you blaspheme divine goodness, you vote Républicain!”

“Are you then the first victim stricken by that hand, Valartine? Have you not seen falling 

around you M. d’Imrahil, Mme. d’Imrahil, Barahier? Would you not have seen M. Dénéthoirtier 

likewise perish, had not the tobacco he hath puffen for three years habituated him to poison?”

“Oh! Mon Érou! is that why he has me share all his beverages and bloweth smoke in mine face?”

“Yes, that explains everything,” said Monte Fato. “He too knows that there’s a poisoner in 

the house, and perhaps who it is. He has forearmed you, his beloved child, against the 

deadly substance. That is doubtless why you still live.”

“But then who is the assassin, the murtherer? Why would any desire my death?”

“You will soon know,” said Monte Fato. “For tonight you no longer have delirium nor fever, 

because tonight you are wide awake, because midnight is ringing and it’s the hour of the 

assassins. It was at midnight that Claude-Symmaque Louis would slay his victims by locking them 

in wardrobes with wild fauns.”

“Mon Érou! mon Érou!” said Valartine. And indeed, the clock struck midnight slowly and 

sadly; one would say that each blow of the hammer of bronze struck the girl’s heart.

“Valartine,” continued the Count, “call all your strength to your aid, compress your heart 

within your bosom, halt your voice within your throat, feign sleep, and you will see, you 

will see!”

Valartine seized the Count’s hand. Hearing a sound, the Count, with a smile so sad and 

paternal that the girl’s heart was penetrated with gratitude, donned the Ring and disappeared, 

although smile like chat de Chechire remained a moment longer.

Alone, Valartine counted the seconds and observed that they were twice as long as the beating 

of her heart, which reminded her briefly of one of Trolquien’s unpublished essays on the 

elvish mode of computing time by waving their ponytails. A terrible idea held her in its grip: 

that there was a person in the world who sought to murther her. How if this person, weary of 

seeing the inefficacy of poison, had recourse to hard cold steel! If the Count were not in 

time to save her! If she should never again see Morrie!

But then, she seemed to see the Eye of the Count, that Eye which crushed her with such 

a shame that she wondered whether her gratitude would ever succeed in effacing this painful 

effect of the Count’s indiscreet friendship that had pierced all shadows to uncover her alone 

in her chemise. 

Twenty minutes, twenty eternities passed in this way, before Valartine seemed to hear the 

creaking of the floor from the direction of Thibaut’s chamber; she pricked up her ear, 

restraining her almost suffocated respiration; the bolt of the lock lifted, and the door 

began to turn on its hinge. 

Valartine summoned all her strength and let hear that regular murmur of the breath that 

announces a tranquil sleep.

Then all remained immobile, save the almost insensible sound of a beverage being poured 

into the glass she had just emptied. “Ouest-tu Valartine hâle!” the voice murmured. 

Then she dared, under the rampart of her extended arm, to half open her eyelid.

She saw then a woman in a white gown emptying into her glass a liquor prepared in a phial 

in style Galadriella, with the characteristic elvish maple-ears wherein poison was concealed

in the days of Elrond the Misanthrope sung by Bolgière: it was Mme. de Villefaramir.

Valartine, in recognising her stepmother, was seized of an acute shuddering. She seemed to 

see shining, in the hand that did not hold the phial, a kind of long sharpened, tasteless 

knife. Then Valartine called all the power of her will to her aid, and forced herself to close 

her eyes. 

Her mission completed, the Society Lady retired, without that the least sound avert to 

Valartine that she had left, nor any other sign than the disappearance of that arm: the 

beautiful arm of a woman of twenty-five, which dispensed death. 

The Count of Monte Fato reappeared and removed his Ring.

“You have seen? You have recognised? Do you yet doubt?” asked the Count.

“Hélas! Mon Érou!” murmured Valartine, almost alarmed. “But can I not leave the house, 

escape …?”

“Valartine, the hand that pursues you will attain you everywhere; by force of gold, 

one will seduce your domestics, and death will offer itself to you, disguised in every aspect, 

in the water you drink from the spring, in the fruit you pluck from the tree, in virus attached 

to thy letters, in critic that reporteth thy debut.”

“But did not you tell me that bon papa had prepared me against poison?”

“Against one poison; but against the Society Lady that is arisen there is no victory,” 

said the Count. “It has already been done, as my transformation shewed. It’s no longer with 

sunni-délit that one poisons you, but with coulaïde; I recognised it by the sinister face that 

forms itself from the dregs, and from the faint but horrific sound of ‘oh, yeah!’ that issues 

forth therefrom. If you had drunk what Mme. de Villefaramir has just poured in thy glass, 

Valartine, thou wert lost, and thine would be the death that turneth its victims into pitchers 

with fatuous smile, and maketh them say ‘Oh yeah!’ ere they expire.”

“But, mon Érou!” cried the girl. “Why pursueth she me thus?”

“What! You are so good, so sweet, so unbelieving in evil that you do not understand, 

Valartine? You are rich, Valartine; you have two hundred thousand fats-hobbites in rent, 

and of those two hundred thousand fats-hobbites you have depriven her cat. And that is why 

M. and Mme. d’Imrahil died, so that you would inherit from your parents; that is why, from 

the day he made you his heir, M. Tête-de-pomme… M. Dénéthoirtier was condemned; that is why 

you, in turn, Valartine, must die: it is so that your father and stepmother inherit from you, 

and their cat (they call him, though he owns their entire mansion as the atelier of his 

scratchings) inherit from them.”

“Thibaut! Poor child; it is for him that one commits all these crimes?” Oh, mon Érou! 

provided all that not rebound upon his feline head!”

“Valartine, you are an Aïnou.”

“Not a nature spirit or a demoiselle of the fan inserting herself into some literary 

work?” 

“And my grandfather, one has then renounced to slay him?”

“One has reflected that, with you dead, his inheritance will go to the cat in any case; 

so that slaying him, being useless, was all the more dangerous.”

“And such a combination was born in the mind of a woman! Ah Elberette Guiltonielle de 

cahin-caha des soufflés!”

“You remember Ithiliande, the man in the grey mantle that your stepmother interrogated 

on the subject of sunni-délit; eh bien, since that age all this infernal project matured 

within her brain like mould in beer cask of the hobbites.”

“Oh, monsieur!” cried the sweet girl, bursting into tears. “I see well, if it is thus, that 

I am condemned to die!”

“Non, Valartine, non; for I have foreseen every plot; no, for our foe is beaten, since 

she is known; no, you will live, Valartine: you will live to love and be loved, you will live 

to be happy and to give happiness to a noble heart; you will love to live, love to love, live 

to live, and the Wise will say that you llived; but to live, Valartine, you must have trust in 

me. You must take blindly what I will give you. You must trust in none other, not even your 

father…”

“My father is not of this horrible plot, is he, monsieur?” asked Valartine joining 

her hands.

“No; but nevertheless, your father, a man accustomed to juridical accusations, must 

suspect what I have told you; it is he who should now be in the place I occupy; it is he who 

should have emptied this glass, and who should already have gnawed the trap that this lady 

of the wargues hath sprung like troll-letter in the journals.”

“Monsieur,” said Valartine. “I shall do my utmost to live, for there exist two beings 

in the world who love me and would die if I were to perish: Meurtrier and my grandfather.”

“I will watch over them as I have watched over you.”

“Eh, bien, monsieur, dispose of me,” said Valartine, adding in a low voice, “Oh mon Érou, 

oh mon Érou! what will become of me?”

“Whatever may befall you, Valartine, do not fear,” said Monte Fato. “If you suffer, if you 

lose your sight, hearing, touch, fear nothing; if you wake in a strange place, knowing not 

where you are, do not be afraid, should you find yourself in some sepulchral vault or nailed 

in some bier or y-stuck in hole of hobbite whence none be thin enough to flee, say to yourself: 

‘At this moment, a friend, a father, the Lord of the Rings, a man who wills my happiness and 

that of Meurtrier watches over me.’ You are my beloved daughter, Valartine,” said the Count, 

resting his hand gently on the arm of the girl, and bringing up to her neck the velvet 

courtepointe. “I alone can save you, and I shall.”

Valartine gave him a smile full of gratitude, and became as docile as a child under 

his wings.

Then the Count drew from the pocket of his gilet a pill-holder of silmaril, raised its 

gilt lid, and handed Valartine a pastille the size of a pea. Valartine took it with her 

other hand, and looked at the Count inquiringly: upon the features of that intrepid protector 

were etched a reflexion of divine majesty and power, so that Valartine cried, “Behold the 

Count!” 

“Oui,” said he. “And forget not that the hands of the Count are the hands of a healer.”

“Go, monsieur,” said Valartine, ingesting the pill. “I promise that, whatever befall me, 


I shall not fear.”

Monte Fato long kept his Eye fixed on the girl, who little by little fell asleep. Then 

he took the glass, emptied  it into the fireplace, so that one believe that Valartine had 

drunk the coulaïde, and replaced it on the night-table; then he disappeared, after having 

bestowed one last glance upon Valartine, who slept with the trust and candor of a hobbite resting at 

the feet of Luthienne after a night of passion.

~~~

The door to Valartine’s room opened; it was Mme. de Villefaramir, returning to see the effect 

of the potion.

Mme. de Villefaramir hesitated to fix her eyes on Valartine or to approach the bed. That 

lugubrious glimmer, that silence, that terrible poesy of the night came doubtless to combine 

with the terrible poesy of the conscience: the poisoner was afraid of her handiwork.

Finally, she drew the curtain and regarded Valartine. The girl no longer breathed; her teeth 

did not let escape any atom of that air that indicates life. Mme. de Villefaramir contemplated 

that visage with an expression so eloquent in its immobility; then, emboldened, she laid a 

hand on the girl’s heart, which was frozen and mute. She removed her hand with a shudder, and 

retired.

Early next morning, the home nurse entered Valartine’s chamber. At first she believed 

Valartine to be asleep; then, astonied by that obstinate sleep wherein the girl remained, 

she advanced towards the bed, and it was only then that she observed those cold lips and that 

frozen bosom. 

Then she uttered a horrible cry: “Au secours! Help!”

M. de Villefaramir and Dr. Tolliers hastened to the site. “Call Mme. de Villefaramir!” 

cried the steuard du roi.

“O Valards, when will you relent!” murmured the doctor.

“What are you saying, doctor!” cried Villefaramir, raising both hands towards heaven. 

“Doctor, doctor!”

“I say that Valartine is dead!” replied Tolliers in a solemn voice terrible in its 

solemnity. Solemnity, as Elrond observed, commonly is.

M. de Villefaramir collapsed with his head on Valartine’s bed. At the words of the doctor 

and the father’s cries, the domestics, terrified, fled, hastening down the stairs; the retreat 

became a rout. Not even a change in name from Voûte du vautour to Maison des munstres could 

restrain their headlong flight.

At that moment, Mme. de Villefaramir appeared on the threshold, where she paused, having the 

air of interrogating those present and summoning to her aid some rebellious tears. 

“Ah!” said Tolliers, examining the glass on Valartine’s night-table with the horror of the 

judge who uncovers the truth, mingled with the joy of the savant who solves some problem 

regarding the question whether Elvish mutations had noses. Mme. de Villefaramir tottered out 

of the room, and disappeared; a moment later, one heard the distant sound of a body hitting 

the floor like cave troll that be y-fallen drunk in proletarian bistro.

The doctor alone had noticed Mme. de Villefaramir’s precipitous departure. 

“Dead, dead!” sighed Villefaramir, in the paroxysm of a grief all the more searing in that it 

was new, unheard of, unknown to that heart of bronze.

“Dead, say you!” cried a third voice. “Who says that Valartine is dead?” turning around, 

Villefaramir and the doctor perceived Morrie standing at the door, pale, shattered, terrible, 

like Pierre-Jacques after the assault of the Trolquien purists.

~~~

“Who are you, monsieur, who forgets thus that one enters not a house where reigns death?” 

said Villefaramir.

Morrie retreated, only to return shortly afterwards, lifting with superhuman strength the 

fauteuil of Dénéthoirtier.

“See what they have done!” cried Morrie, one hand still resting on the fauteuil, and the 

other extended towards Valartine. “See, my father, see!”

Villefaramir recoiled a step and gazed with astoundment on this young hobbite who called 

Dénéthoirtier “my father.”

“Monsieur,” continued Morrie. “One asks what I am, and by what right I am here. O you who 

know, tell them! Tell them that she was my most noble friend, my little pipe-weed leaf of the 

heart, my fiancée, that that cadaver is mine!” And the voice of the young hobbite was extinguished 

in sobs.

As for the potato, his halitating respirations shook his tuberiform frame. Finally, tears 

streamed forth from his eyes; happier he than the young hobbite, who sobbed without weeping.

That sorrow was so poignant that Tolliers turned away to hide his emotion, and Villefaramir, 

without asking for more explanation, attracted by that magnetism which draws us to those 

who have loved one whom we mourn, extended his hand to the young hobbite. “Monsieur,” 

he said, regaining control before the others, “you loved Valartine; you say that she was 

your fiancée; I knew nothing of this love, or this engagement; and yet I, her father, forgive 

you, for I see that your grief is great and true. But the time is come that you separate from 

her for ever; she now has need only of a priest to bless her.”

“M. de Villefaramir, you err,” cried Morrie, “She needs not only a priest, but an avenger. 

Valartine was murdered!

“Come, monsieur le steuard du roi, no pity! I denounce to you the crime; seek the assassin, 

in Annuminas he dwells!”

His implacable eye interrogated Villefaramir, who, looking to the physician and to Dénéthoirtier 

for succour, found in them a look as inflexible as that of Morrie.

“No one murders here,” began Villefaramir, trying to struggle against that triple will and 

against his emotion, but Morrie interrupted with a detailed account of that conversation he 

had overheard long ago, when the doctor had shown Villefaramir that murther indeed reigned in 

that house as surely as in overdone Forodois estate inhabitated by the Jawless Ones whose 

impenetrable accent spells death.

“This fourth murder is more flagrant and evident than all the others,” concluded Morrie. 

“O Valartine! If thy father abandon thee, it is I, it is I, I swear it, who shall pursue 

the assassin!”

“And I too,” said Tolliers in a strong voice, albeit one somewhat obscured by his pipe and 

Oxfattois accent. “For my heart shudders at the thought that I, by my cowardly complaisance, 

encouraged the murtherer!”

“Yes!” puffed Dénéthoirtier, with an expression all the more terrible in that all the 

faculties of that poor powerless vegetable were concentrated in his look.

“You know the murtherer?” said Morrie.

“Yes!” puffed the tuber, who then indicated that Morrie and Tolliers should leave him alone 

with Villefaramir for a few moments.

When Morrie and Tolliers returned, Villefaramir begged them that this horrible secret be 

buried among them for now like portrait of elf-actor who no longer be fashionable. “Be 

tranquil, messieurs, justice shall be done,” said Villefaramir. “My father has revealed to me 

the name of the culprit; my father thirsts for vengeance like you, and yet he begs you to keep 

the secret of the crime. If my father, the inflexible man whom you know, makes this request 

of you, it is because he knows that Valartine will be terribly avenged!”

Villefaramir was then forced to ask Tolliers to take charge of those actions, so numerous and 

so delicate, that death under suspicious circumstances entails in our large cities. The doctor 

then went in search of a priest, knowing well that there was a good Elvish priest next door.

“I will go, monsieur,” said the abbé in response to the physician’s entreaties. “And I 

daresay that never were prayers more ardent than mine shall be while your kingdoms last, 

nor until Mickey la Souris perish from the earth in the War of Spleen.”

Tolliers conducted the priest to Valartine’s room, without encountering Villefaramir, who 

was shut in his cabinet. Entering the chamber, he found Dénéthoirtier there, who doubtless 

read something particular in the abbé’s glance.

~~~

Against all expectation, indeed, the potato had made no difficulty in being separated 

from its child.

At eleven o’clock, the funeral vehicles rolled onto the pavement of the courtyard, and rue 

Rat-Dinent filled with the murmurs of the crowd, equally avid of the joys and of the grief 

of the rich, and who ran to the interment of a tycoon’s daughter with the same haste as to 

the marriage of a duchess to an eloped dwarf.

Little by little, the mortuary salon was filled, and one saw first the arrival of our old 

acquaintances, c’est-à-dire De Brie, Château-Renard, Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel 

Boyen-Xènes-Baguines, then all the luminaries of the bench, of cuisine hobbitaine, and of 

the army; for M. de Villefaramir occupied, less by his social position than by his personal 

merit, one of the first ranks in the Annuminasian monde.

As a pure Annuminasian, Villefaramir regarded Digue-des-morts-Boubles-savon as the only 

cemetery worthy to receive the mortal coil of an Annuminasian; he had, therefore, bought 

a mausoleum there by the name of Rat-Dinent, which is Sindarin for “Dinner of rats.”†† One 

read on the façade of the mausoleum FAMILLE D’IMRAHIL ET VILLEFARAMIR; for such had been the 

wish of the poor Finduilette, mother of Valartine.

It was therefore to Digue-des-morts-Boubles-savon that the pompous cortège made its way from 

the Voûte du vautour. More than fifty master vehicles followed twenty vehicles of mourning, 

and, behind these fifty vehicles, more than five hundred persons walked on foot. Almost all 

of these were young people whom the death of Valartine had stricken like a bolt of lightning, 

and who, despite the glacial vapour of the century and the prosaism of the epoch, where dreams 

and legends no longer spring to life on the green grass, which in any case has either been paved 

over or so immaculately trimmed that, did legend appear therein, it would look scandalously out 

of place, underwent the poetic influence of that beautiful, of that chaste, of that adorable 

girl, taken from them in the flower of her youth.

On the departure from Annuminas, one saw the sudden arrival of a rapid team of pterodactyls: 

it was M. de Monte Fato.

The funereal ceremony began. Some attendees, and, as usual, it was the least affected, 

pronounced some discourses, replete with touching memories of the girl pleading with the 

steuard for the condemned Orcs who haddeth scribbled highly politically unfashionable graffiti 

under the sword of justice; finally, the ingenious metaphors about out how, of doubt, out 

of dark, out of debutante’s first ball, to the days rising, she went singing in the sun, 

knitting-needles unsheathing, exhausted themselves, along with the dolorous perorations 

commenting in every fashion on stanzas from Malherbe-à-pipe to M. Arassole.

M. de Monte Fato heard nothing and saw nothing, or rather he saw naught but Morrie, whose 

calm and immobility formed a terrifying spectacle to who could read into his heart.

“Look!” said Pierre-Jacques-Philippe-Michel Boyen-Xènes-Baguines. “There’s Morrie! What the 

morgot is he doing down there? I think he is moved.”

“Bah!” said De Brie. “He hardly knew her.”

“True,” said Château-Renard. “However, I seem to recall that he danced with her thrice at 

the ball chez Mme. de Pérégrin; you know, Count, at that ball where you produced such an 

effect.”

“No, I do not know,” said the Count, not knowing to what he was replying. And he brusquely 

bade them adieu, and vanished, without that any knew where he had gone.

The Count followed Meurtrier invisible and soundless as a poorly attended chat inhabited 

solely by idling mutes, until they reached the latter’s home at rue Jadis-Joppelin, 14. 

Monte Fato removed the Ring, and knocked on the door.

“Ah! Monsieur le comte de Monte Fato!” cried Bilbette with that joy that every member 

of the family manifested at the sight of Monte Fato, as he were the restoration of the ancient 

kings, but better groomed.

“Pardon, madame,” replied Monte Fato. “But I must see Meurtrier this instant.”

“Go then,” she said with a charming smile that accompanied the Count until he had vanished 

from sight again.

There was no key to the glass door that led to Meurtrier’s apartments, where Morrie had shut 

himself, and a double curtain of vermilion rendered it impossible to see within.

Monte Fato shuddered from the head to the feet, and, as for him decision had the rapidity 

of an éclair, he called down a bolt of lightning that blew open the door with éclat: he saw 

Morrie with pen in hand leap in astonishment.

“Ma foi, it’s the fault of your domestics,” said Monte Fato. “They could at least have 

placed a charm of protection on this door in case a supernatural being wished to enter.”

“Are you hurt, monsieur?” inquired Morrie coldly.

“I know not. But what were you doing in here? You were writing?”

“It is true, I was writing,” said Morrie. “That happens now and then, soldier though I 

be.”

Monte Fato looked around. “Your blunderbusses on your writing desk!” he cried.

“I’m leaving on a journey, like the chevalier de Nigle” said Morrie.

“My friend, Meurtrier, no extreme resolutions, I beg you!”

“Extreme resolutions?” said Morrie with a shrug. “How is taking a journey an extreme resolution?”

“Ma foi, what do they teach in those military academies?” cried the Count. “You understand, 

do you not, that to break into your apartments like this, I must have had a real inquietude, 

or rather a terrible conviction? Meurtrier, you are going to kill yourself!”

“Eh bien,” cried Morrie, passing from the appearance of calm to the expression of violence, 

“if I choose to turn the canon of my blunderbuss upon myself, who will prevent me? Certainly 

not thou! It will take more than thy Mordorian bauble!”

“Yes,” said Monte Fato, with a calm that contrasted marvellously with the excitement of 

the young hobbite. “It will be I.”

“You!” cried Morrie with a growing expression of anger and reproach. “You who lured me, 

you who restrained, cradled, put me to sleep with vain promises, when I could, with a coup 

d’état, with some extreme resolution, have saved her, or at least sung a final duet with her 

dying in my arms; you, with all your power and magical jewellery, could not even provide an antidote 

to a poisoned girl! Since you bring me a new torture, Count of Monte Fato, universal saviour, 

Count of Monte Fato, Lord of the Rings, Count of Monte Fato, Renewer of the Fashions of Sauron, 

be satisfied, you shall see your friend die!” and, with a delirious laugh, he threw himself upon 

the weapons, but was driven back when the Count uttered a word of command.

“But who are you, and by what tyrannical right do you abrogate the rights of free and thinking 

creatures!” cried Morrie.

“Who am I?” repeated Monte Fato. “I am the only man who has the right to say to you: Morrie, 

I do not will that the son of your father die today!” And Monte Fato, majestic, transfigured, 

sublime, advanced towards the palpitating young hobbite who recoiled, conquered by the near 

divinity of that man, whose cologne no mortal durst wear.

“I am he who aforetime saved the life of your father, one day when he wished to slay himself, 

as you do today,” continued the Count. “I am he who sent the purse to Bilbette and the 

Pharazon to the old Morrie; I am Samouard Gamgès, who played Orcs and Wargues with you as 

an infant!”

Morrie drew back again, staggering, suffocated, panting, crushed; then his strength abandoned 

him, and with a great cry he fell prostrate at the feet of the Count of Monte Fato, as did 

Turin at the feet of Bélègue upon receiving the filets of Doriat.

Then there was a sudden and complete regeneration in that admirable nature: he rose, bounded 

out of the room, and precipitated into the stairway, crying with all the power of his voice 

(which hit several high Cs): “Bilbette! Bilbette! Armalvéguil!” They ran upstairs, affrayed.

“Kneel before the Count!” he cried in a strangled voice (the chipmunks booed). “Kneel before 

Monsieur the Seigneur des Anneaux! He is the saviour, the benefactor of our father! He’s …”

The Count silenced him by seizing his arm, before he could say, “He’s Samouard Gamgès!”

Bilbette elanced herself upon the Count’s hand; Armalvéguil embraced him like a tutelary 

divinity; Morrie fell prostrate again, striking the floor with his forehead.

Then the man of bronze††† felt dilate his heart within his bosom, like unto the Grinche 

when he heard the songs of the Qui, a jet of devouring flame gushed from his throat to his 

Eye, he bowed his head and wept!

Bilbette had barely recovered from the emotion so profound that she had just experienced, 

when she elanced herself out of the chamber, ran downstairs to the salon with childlike joy, 

and seized the globe of crystal that protected the purse given her by Éarendeau le marin 

in day of yore.

“Ilouvatar and the Valards are my witness,” said Monte Fato, “that I wished to bury this 

secret during my entire life within the depths of my soul; your brother Meurtrier forced it 

from me by violences whereof he doubtless now repents.”

Then, seeing that Meurtrier was now kneeling in a corner, he added, “Watch over him.”

Armalvéguil looked around the room and, horrified, apperceived the blunderbuss.

At this moment, Bilbette remounted the stairway, holding the purse in hand, and two tears 

brilliant and joyous rolled on her cheeks like two drops of matutinal dew. “Here is the 

relic,” she said. “Think not that it be less dear to me when our saviour is revealed!”

Joining the hands of Bilbette and Armalvéguil in his own, Monte Fato, with the gentle authority 

of a father, said to them, “Leave me alone with Meurtrier.” They obeyed.

“Mon ami, listen,” said Monte Fato in an accent of profound melancholy. “One day, in a 

despair equal to yours, since it led me to a similar resolution, I like you wished to slay 

myself; one day your father too wished to commit suicide, and yet how many times, embracing 

thee, did he bless life, how many times I myself … If then, I beg thee, I command thee to live, 

Morrie, it is in the conviction that one day thou wilt thank me for having conserved thy 

life. Forget not that this is the very day, the 25 Soûlimôse, whereon I saved thy father!”

Morrie fell prostrate before Monte Fato; the Count let him do it, as if this act of adoration 

were only his due.

“My friend, my father!” cried Morrie, exalted. “Have a care, for your influence over me 

terrifies me, voilà my heart that returns to life and is reborn; have a care, for you will 

make me believe supernatural things. I would obey if you commanded me to make a sorbet of the 

snows of Charadras and serve it at the soirées of Yavanne; I would obey you if you commanded 

me to cross the Grinding Ice in a calèche drawn by critics while wearing the culottes that were 

in fashion during the Tierce époque.”

The Count smiled a smile of ineffable gentleness, doffing his hat and pulling a rabbit therefrom. 

“Hope, my friend,” he commanded. “Knowest thou that whereof the Count of Monte Fato is capable? 

Knowest thou that he has the faith to move mountains?”

“Have pity on me, Count,” said Morrie.

“I have so much pity for Meurtrier, that, listen to me, if you do not heal in a month, I 

myself will ease thy way to Mandeaux with a poison far more efficacious than that which took 

Valartine. For the next month, thou shalt follow me and live with me.”

Morrie bowed his head, and obeyed like a child or like a disciple, or even a fan.

~~~

“Tell madame that I wish to speak to her, and that I beg her to await me in her 

quarters,” commanded Villefaramir. The domestic bowed and left.

And Villefaramir, dossiers under the arm and hat in hand, directed himself towards his 

wife’s apartments.

Mme. de Villefaramir was seated on an ottoman, and was leafing impatiently through some 

journals that Thibaut had cut up after overdosing on catnip, before she had even managed to 

finish reading them. She was dressed to go out.

“How pale you are, monsieur!” she cried. “Have you been working all night on the case of 

the homicidal librarian again?”

“Madame, where do you put the poison you normally use?” articulated the magistrate clearly 

and without preamble, standing between his wife and the door.

Mme. de Villefaramir experienced what the lark must experience when she sees the sparrowhawk 

saw the aether with his murderous circles.

“Monsieur, I do not … do not understand,” said she.

“I ask,” continued Villefaramir perfectly calmly, “where you hide the poison by the aid 

whereof you have slain my father-in-law and mother-in-law, M. and Mme. d’Imrahil; my servant 

Barahier, and my daughter Valartine.”

The pallor of that woman was a terrible sight, the anguish of her regard, the trembling of 

her whole body. “Ah monsieur!” she cried; and that was all.

Then he added, with a smile more dreadful than his wrath, “It is true that you do not deny 

it! Nor could you deny it,” he continued, extending a hand towards her as if to seize her 

in the name of Justice, “for you have committed these crimes with an impudent aplomb that 

could deceive none save those blinded by affection. M. Tolliers, whose studies of the Elvish 

migrations and schisms betoken a not common intellect, had already warned me at the death of 

Mme. d’Imrahil; may Érou forgive me! My suspicions fell then upon an angel! But after the death 

of Valartine, there is no longer a doubt for me, and not only for me, madame, but for others. 

You speak now not to the husband, but to the judge!”

“O monsieur!” stammered the young woman. “Do not believe in appearances!”

“Will you be cowardly?” cried Villefaramir contemptuously. “You, who have counted one by 

one the minutes of four agonies, who have combined your infernal plans and concocted your 

infamous potions with so miraculous an ability and a precision, that an Elrond or a Claude-

Symmaque Louis might well envy?”

Mme. de Villefaramir fell to her knees and wrung her hands.

“I know, I know, you confess,” said he. “But a confession made to the judge at the last 

moment, when one can no longer deny one’s guilt, that confession cannot diminish in any way 

the punishment that shall be inflicted upon the culprit. It could not save Morgot from dancing 

the quadrille with Nienne, nor will it save you!”

“Punishment!” cried Mme. de Villefaramir. 

“No doubt. Is it because you are four times guilty that you thought to escape it? Is it 

because you are the wife of the judge who pronounces the sentence that you believed punishment 

would pass you by? No, madame, non! Whoever she be, the scaffold awaits the poisoner, and 

the poor verse of Bombadil and Trolquien sung by Brittené de Spiers shall be the last music 

to assail her dejected ear -- unless she have conserved some drops of poison for herself.”

“Non, monsieur!” cried Mme. de Villefaramir. “Non, non, you cannot want that!”

“What I want is that justice be done. I am in Terre-moyenne to punish, madame,” he added 

with a flaming glance. “Any other woman I would send to the executioner; but to you I will 

be merciful. Therefore, I ask of you, do you not have some drops of poison conserved?”

Mme. de Villefaramir fell at the feet of her husband. Villefaramir approached her. “Think 

about it, madame,” he said. “If, when I return, justice is not done, I shall arrest you with 

my own hands.”

Mme. de Villefaramir sighed, her nerves were distended, and she collapsed broken upon the 

carpet, like giant spider slain by Bilbon’s withering bon mots.

The steuard du roi appeared to experience a moment of pity, for he looked at her less 

severely, and, bowing lightly before her, said slowly, “Adieu, madame!”

The steuard left, locking the door with a double bolt. 

~~~

The judges and jury took their seats; all eyes were on Villefaramir, the object of admiration 

for all. Soon the accused was led in, bound head and foot in lembas leaves. Upon entering 

the hall, the young being’s regard scanned the ranks of the judges, to rest upon the president 

and especially the steuard du roi. “My accommodations are poorly furnished,” he said with 

an apologetic smile. “I would not mind so much, except that there is also a kind of a Mouse 

thing that gives everyone in the prison the most frightful cheek.” No one laughed: this was 

outrageous.

The president requested that the act of accusation be read – redacted, as you know, by the 

so skilful and so implacable pen of Villefaramir. During this reading, which was long, and 

which for anyone else would have left them crumbled in the dust as one whose Sindarin had been 

corrected by Saleau-Fauxchangeur or Hostettier-Wynné, the attention of the public did not 

cease to bear upon Andurillo, who bore its weight with the gaiety of the Géant Vert Joyeux. 

Yet, after the preamble alone, Andurillo was for ever lost in public opinion, and it was only 

a matter of time before he were more materially punished by the Law.

“Accused, your name and forenames?” said the president.

“Be so kind, I beg, as to allow me to respond in a different order from the usual,” said 

Trascoletto in a tone as clear as the Perrier of Quélède-Zarâme or the Faque. “I will nonetheless 

respond to all.”

“Your age?” said the president.

“I have been twenty-one years in this ghastly universe if it isn’t a dream, having been born 

the 28 Yavannidor, 1817 Quatrième époque.”

Villefaramir, who had been taking notes, raised his head at that date.

“Where were you born?” continued the president.

“At Barroue-Don, near Annuminas.”

Villefaramir raised his head a second time, regarded Trascoletto as he were the accursed 

jellyfish who stang the daughter of Trolquien, and became livid.

“Your profession?” asked the president.

“I was at first a forger,” said Andurillo the most tranquilly of the world. “Then I went on 

to become a thief, and recently I have made myself a murderer.”

A murmur or rather a tempest of indignation and surprise burst forth from all sides of the 

hall; for none had expected such cynicism of so elegant a … balrogue? Ent? Hobbite? It hardly 

mattered, as long he wore the right spats.

“Will you now consent to tell us your name?” asked the president at last, with a politeness 

that failed to conceal his disgust at the thing of slime that paraded itself before the 

nauseated gaze of all.

“I cannot tell you my name, for I do not know it; but I can tell you the name of my father.”

“Then do so,” commanded the president. Villefaramir was blinded by a painful éblouissement 

like that experienced by the innkeeper whom Gandault accused of selling warm beer.

“My father is the steuard du roi,” said Andurillo.

“Steuard du roi!” said the president with stupefaction. 

The explosion, so long contained by the respect one maintains in a séance towards Justice, 

attained the light of day like a thunderbolt from the depth of every bosom therein.

A woman fainted, and it took several smelling salts laced with lembas to restore her.

“Messieurs,” said Andurillo in his most gracious manner. “I have named my father in order 

to co-operate fully with the magistrature, and am ready to prove the veracity of my statement 

that my father is indeed named Villefaramir.” There was in the accent a certitude, a conviction, 

an energy that reduced the tumults to silence.

“I was born on the first storey of rue Vieilhomme-Willeau, N°. 28, Barroue-Don in a room 

hung with red damask and adorned with menhirs; my father told my mother that I was dead, 

enveloped me in a napkin marked ‘LB,’ and buried me alive in the garden.”

A shudder of horror ran through the audience when they saw that the assurance of the accused 

grew with the terror of M. de Villefaramir.

“But how do you know all these details?” asked the president. “And are you not an ent or 

balrogue?”

“I will tell you, monsieur le président. In the garden where my father had just buried me, 

a balrogue had introduced himself who hated my father mortally, or immortally as I should 

say, and had long followed him with deadly intent. The balrogue assaulted him, and having 

wounded him, retrieved the box he had espied him to bury in the garden. Therein he found me, 

and he brought me home to Rogliano, where he raised me, though born to mortals, as a balrogue.”

“But what about the ent?” inquired the president.

“That was just a ruse to obtain the greenbacks of Fangornes,” replied Trascoletto. “But to 

resume: I could have been happy with the fine people who had adopted me and sprayed me with 

asbestos every day, to ward off death by flammification, but my perverse nature gained the 

upper hand over all the virtues my adoptive mother sought to instil in me. My father, then, 

has damned me to the black pits of evil wherein my soul hath become encrusted so that even 

when I read the Silmarillion to learn virtue, the only parts I read with pleasure were of 

the crimes of Féanoir. I hope Tache ate the Dwarves too. Little swine.”

“And your mother?” asked the president.

“My mother believed me dead; she is innocent. I do not know her name.”

At that moment, a sharp cry, ending in a sob, issued forth from the throat of a woman. The 

woman was seized by an attack of the nerves more violent than the siege of Gondolino, and a 

veil fell from her face while she was removed from the praetorium, revealing her to be Mme. 

de Sacqueville-Danglars.

“The proofs!” said the president. “Remember that such a tissue of horrors must be supported 

by the most stunning proofs.”

“Behold M. de Villefaramir,” said Trascoletto with a laugh. “And then require proofs of me!”

Everyone turned towards the steuard du roi, who, under the weight of the thousand regards 

riveted upon him, advanced in the enclosure of the tribunal, tottering, the hair in disorder 

and the visage beblotchen by the pression of his nails. The assembly gave one long murmur 

of astonishment, in unison. The chipmunks were impressed.

“I would struggle in vain against the mortal grip that crushes me, messieurs!” he cried “I 

am, I recognise, in the hand of the avenging Valards; doubtless that of Tolcas, for this 

revenge is indeed in poor taste. No proofs; there is no need thereof; all that this young man 

saith is true!”

“And what! Monsieur de Villefaramir,” cried the president. “You yield to a hallucination? 

Do you enjoy the plenitude of your faculties? Consider!”

Villefaramir shook his head, the teeth whereof chattered like one in grip of a mortal fever, 

and yet his pallor surpassed that of Galadriella when she was tempted by a ringwraith to 

attend the lava-baths in a second-hand negligee. “I am in possession of all my faculties,” 

he said. “And I am guilty of all that the accused as articulated against me, and it is for 

my successor to arraign me of these deeds.” 

Villefaramir left the hall. The president declared the séance adjourned. 

~~~

Arrived at Voûte du vautour, Villefaramir dragged himself along the corridors, half-bowed, 

often stumbling, as if the eyes no longer saw the way before his feet, guided solely by habit; 

he threw from his shoulders the magisterial toga, not for decency’s sake, but because it was 

an overwhelming burden on the body and a torment on the mind worse than the embarrassment 

of Isildour when he went to the ball wearing an unfashionable ring; a tunic of Galadriella 

fecund of tortures††††. With this in mind, he tripped on one of Mme. de Villefaramir’s stiletto 

shoes, which had been sown by Thibaut with wild abandon during a visit of Omallé and the alley 

cats.

Villefaramir thought of his wife … and a red iron traversed his heart. Indeed, for an hour 

he had only had one face of his misery before the eyes, and voilà that tout à coup another 

offered itself to his mind, and no less terrible.

That woman, he had just condemned her to death as an inexorable judge, like Mandaux excluding 

the Noldaux from a ball to which even the Télérins had been invited; and she, stricken with 

terror, crushed with remorse, abysmed with the shame wherewith he had burthened her by the 

eloquence of his irreproachable virtue, she, a poor weak woman with no defense against an 

absolute and supreme power, she was perhaps at that very moment preparing herself for death!

“Ah!” he cried. “That woman only became a criminal because she touched me. I exude crime, 

moi! She contracted crime as one contracts typhus, as one contracts cholera, as the Orcs 

contract the element of Morgot! And I punish her! I, I dare to say to her: Repent and die! 

Oh, the alliance of the tiger and the serpent! Worthy bride of a husband such as I! She must 

live, her infamy must be shown to pale in comparison with mine!”

Consoled with the thought that in saving Mme. de Villefaramir he was performing a good deed 

for once, Villefaramir came to the door of the room where he had left his wife. 

“Béruthielle!” he cried. “Béruthielle!”

“Who is there?” asked the voice of her whom he called. It seemed to him that the voice was 

weaker than aforetime.

“It is I; open!” he cried. But despite the tone of anguish with which this command was uttered, 

one did not open. Villefaramir forced open the door.

At the entrance of the chamber that gave into her boudoir, Mme. de Villefaramir stood, pale, 

her face contracted, and stared at him with a terrifying fixity like an animated pitcher.

“Béruthielle, what is wrong with you? Speak!” he cried.

The young woman extended a hand, stiff and livid, towards him, and said, “It is done, monsieur. 

What more do you want? Oh yeah!”

And she fell upon the carpet. Villefaramir ran to her and seized her hand, in which she 

held a small golden phial, within which the abominable traits of coulaïde were clearly to 

be seen. Mme. de Villefaramir was dead. Villefaramir, drunk with horror, recoiled to the 

threshold and regarded the cadaver. 

“My cat!” he cried suddenly. “Thibaut! Thibaut!”

Villefaramir made three or four steps forward, and on the sofa he saw the cat, doubtless 

asleep.

The wretch had an élan of ineffable joy; a ray of pure light descended into that newsgroupe 

of the soul.

He raised the cat in his arms, shaking it, calling it; the cat did not respond. He pressed 

a hand to its heart; the heart did not beat. The cat was dead, its paw still clutching the 

can of spray-paint it had been using to write Sharcoléonist slogans on the wall. This had 

been a favourite prank of the creature in life.

A paper folded in four fell from the other paw. Villefaramir picked up the paper, recognised 

his wife’s handwriting, and read it avidly. It said:

“You know I was a good mother, for it was for my son, conceived by dark arts in a secret 

place, that I became a criminal. A good mother never leaves her son!”

These two victims filled Villefaramir with dread. Just a moment before, he had been sustained 

by wrath and despair, that supreme virtue of agony, which led Hurin to scale the heights of 

Thangorodrin in evening dress, and Féanoir to shake his white-gloved fist at the gods.

~~~

M. de Villefaramir, who had never taken pity on another, went to find his father, the old 

potato, that he might have someone to whom to recount his misfortune, someone near whom to 

weep. When Villefaramir entered Dénéthoirtier’s apartments, the tuber was listening, as 

affectionately as a vegetable can, to the words of the abbé Glorfindoni, who seemed as calm 

and cold as ever.

“You here, monsieur!” said Villefaramir. “But do you then only appear as an escort of Death? 

Yet your garb is in better taste than that of Mandaux.”

The abbé, from the alteration of the magistrate’s visage and the ferocious éclat of his eyes, 

understood, or believed he understood, that the assizes had taken place; he was ignorant 

of the rest. “I am come to tell you that you have paid me your debt, and that I will pray 

Érou and the Valards, that they content themselves as I will content myself.”

“By the coifs of Luthienne!” cried Villefaramir, recoiling, terror etched on his forehead. 

“That voice … it is not that of the abbé Glorfindoni!”

“Non.” The abbé removed his false blond wig, shook his head, and his pointed ears (constructed 

of the finest mithrile) fell from his head upon the floor bescratched with orc-runes by 

Thibaut on the last day of his brief but entertaining life. He held up the Ring.

“It’s the Count of Monte Fato!” cried Villefaramir, the eyes haggard.

“It is not even that, monsieur le steuard du roi,” said the mysterious Being. “Seek further, 

seek better.”

“That voice! Where did I hear it for the first time?”

“You heard it for the first time in Hobbitonne, twenty-three years ago, on the day of your 

marriage to Mlle. d’Imrahil.”

“By the cravate of Tolcas, you are that implacable, hidden, mortal enemy! I did something 

against you in Hobbitonne, woe is me! But what did I do?” cried Villefaramir, whose mind 

floated already on the limit that confounds sanity and madness.

“You condemned me to a slow and hideous death, you slew my father, you stole from me love 

with liberty, and fortune with love; you ruined my pipe-weed!”

“Who are you, then? Who?”

“I am the ringwraith of a wretch whom you buried in the dungeons of the castle of Locqueholles. 

To this ringwraith risen from the tomb the Valards have given the Ring of Power and the mask 

of the Count of Monte Fato, and they have covered him with mithrile and silmarils, that you 

might not recognise him until this very day.”

“Oh, I recognise thee … I recognise thee! Thou art …”

“I am Samouard Gamgès!”

“Thou art Samouard Gamgès!” cried the steuard, seizing the Count by the wrist. “Then come!” 

and he dragged him up the stairwell, wherein Monte Fato, astounded, followed him, ignorant 

where the steuard was leading him, and foreboding some new catastrophe.

“Well, Samouard Gamgès!” he cried, showing the Count the cadaver of his wife and the corpse 

of his cat. “Look! Art thou avenged?”

Monte Fato pallished at this horrible spectacle, worse than the monocle of Morgot; he 

understood that he had gone beyond the rights of vengeance; he understood that he could no 

longer say: “Érou and the Valards are for me and with me.” As wicked fools he had scorned 

Men; but he pitied them at last.

“Monsieur,” said Monte Fato, in a tone of voice almost humble. “You have lost a cat, but …”

Villefaramir interrupted; he had neither heard nor understood. “Oh, I will find him,” he 

said. “You in vain to pretend he is not here, I will find him, should I have to search 

untilst the Dagueur Dagourat, when Turin will slay Morgot and at least spare the world that 

fashion statement. Of course, Tolkien was not in the least aware of his work's significance 

on a conscious level, but like wow man you cats is square you ain't never smoked a tolkien?  

Even if you haven't read all of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, you are welcome 

here, but be careful!  Spoilers for the stories can be anywhere, so remove all doubt about 

your manhood and buy cheap pills and invest in Nigériande.”

Monte Fato recoiled in terror. “Oh, mon Érou! he is mad!” And, as if he feared that that 

house would collapse upon him like the Dark Tower upon Sauron, ruining his top hat for ever 

and a day, he elanced himself into the street, doubting for the first time that he had the 

right to do what he had done. “Oh, enough, enough of that!” he cried. “Let us save the last!”

† A revolutionary society of irritating journalists who quarrelled endlessly in the press over 

trivia such as whether grande dames had real hair and whether the prima donna Editta Blasta was 

an elf. 

†† Research proves Dunadas to have been correct in this, despite Saleau-Fauxchangeur's claim that 

it means "Silent Street," which is an imposture completely devoid of poesy.

††† Some scholars maintain that Dunadas meant this quite literally, and that the Count was an 

android. But that is obviously rubbish.

†††† The tunic offered to Guimly by his mistress Galadriella had been drenched in poison by a 

jealous Celeborno, and caused the hero to die in abominable suffering.