Bacq

The Count of Monte Fato

As Bilbette and Armalvéguil discussed among themselves the mysterious workings of the Author of the events they had experienced, wondering whether their existence were more than a pastiche of classics written by a poor parodist, the Count of Monte Fato knocked softly on their door, whispering, “Open in the name of Mordor!” – a pleasantry that highly amused them, and added to the delight wherewith they received him. Meurtrier raised his head and then let it fall again.

“Meurtrier,” said the Count, not seeming to notice the different responses his presence produced in his hosts, “I am come to seek you.”

“To seek me?” said Morrie, as if awaking from a dream.

“Yes,” said Monte Fato. “Had we not agreed that we would go together, and had I not warned you to be ready?”

“Me voici,” said Morrie. “I had come to bid them farewell.”

“And where are you going, Count?” asked Bilbette.

“To Hobbitonne, to begin with,” said the Count. “And I am taking your brother with me.”

“Hélas, monsieur le comte!” cried Bilbette. “Return him to us healed!”

“And stop changing my language settings, you stupid machine!” added Armalvéguil from his desk.

Morrie turned away to conceal his shame.

“Forget not that my hands are the hands of a healer, and that Microsofte cannot avail against me,” said Monte Fato.

“I am ready, monsieur,” said Morrie. “Adieu, Armalvéguil! Adieu, Bilbette!”

“You will see him return laughing and joyous,” said Monte Fato.

Meurtrier lanced towards the Count a look disdainful, almost irritated, as he was led away by the Count to his pterodactyl. After the two had left, Bilbette and Armalvéguil marvelled, saying, “It is a god that leaves us, returning to heaven after having done good to us on earth!” De Brie later commented cynically that this god was more in the nature of a Marie Susanne, an irritating authorial self-insertion worthy of the serials in the feuilletons. The Roi des sorciers wrote an indignant letter to the newspapers in response.

The voyage took place with that marvellous rapidity that is one of the superpowers of the Count; towns passed like shadows; trees, shaken by the first winds of autumn, seemed to come towards them like dishevelled giants, and then fled as soon as they attained them like cowardly Ents who had to be tricked by juvenile hobbites into showing any kind of mettle.

The further the Count distanced himself from Annuminas, the more a superhuman serenity seemed to envelop him like an aureole. One would have thought him an exiled king who had returned to his fatherland and married the wrong girl and been crowned by Gandault and had his Quenyois corrected by Hostettier-Wynné. Soon Hobbitonne, white, warm, living; Hobbitonne, younger sister of Brie and Keeblerville, and to whom they yielded the empire of the sea of Terre-moyenne; Hobbitonne, ever the younger the more cholesterol shortened the lives of its inhabitants, appeared to their eyes.

“Look,” said Morrie, recovering somewhat from his brown study and taking Monte Fato by the arm. “Voici the place where my father stopped when they brought the Pharazon to port; here the great man whom you saved from death and dishonour threw himself into my arms.”

Monte Fato smiled. “I was there,” he said, pointing to a corner in the street. “I was disguised as a vagrant dwarf.”
 
Then the Count put Morrie into suspended animation so that he (the Count) could take an excursus in order to show mercy to Sacqueville-Danglars and come to terms with the Past and salve his angste before conquering the world.

~~~

Sacqueville-Danglars, meanwhile, was lurking in his cave, feeling very bored despite his efforts to make the cave look like an imposing financial building with the aid of some friendly Druédains, when a knock at what passed for the door roused him. It was Luigi Vanya of Luigi Vanya and Co., Bandits, calling to remind him that he still had outstanding debts with that organization.

“Take my last gold,” stammered Sacqueville-Danglars, handing the bandit his portefeuille. “And let me live here, in this cave, in peace; I no longer ask for liberty, I only ask to be allowed to live.”

“You suffer, then?” said Vanya.

“Oh, yes, I suffer, and cruelly!”

“Nevertheless, there are people who have suffered more than you.”

“Yes, there are others who have suffered more than I, but at least they were martyrs and suffered for their faith in the truths of Pierre-Jacques regarding the dwarves and how to toss them and cure their stiff necks with cognac-de-tylenolle.”

“You repent, at least?” said a sombre and solemn voice that made the hairs on Sacqueville-Danglars’s feet stand up.

The banker’s weakened eyes saw behind the bandit a man enveloped in a mantle and lost in the shade of a pilaster of earth.

“Of what must I repent?” stammered Sacqueville-Danglars.

“Of the evil you have done,” said the voice. “Of being a wicked capitalist and probably a countertenor and being ugly.”

“Oh, yes, I repent, I repent!” cried Sacqueville-Danglars, striking his bosom with weakened fist.

“Then I forgive you,” said the man, doffing his mantle whose tails reached out like two vast wings and stepping forward into the light.
 
“The Count of Monte Fato!” said Sacqueville-Danglars, paler with terror than he had been, a moment before, with hunger and misery.

“You err; I am not the Count of Monte Fato.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I am he whom you sold, betrayed, dishonoured; I am he whose fiancée you prostituted; I am he upon whom you have walked in your ascent to fortune; I am he whose father you drove to hunger, and whom you had condemned to die of hunger; I am he upon whom you, in our youth aboard the Pharazon, inflicted tasteless stories about Aragon XV  and his horse, and who yet forgives you, because he himself has need of forgiveness: I am Samouard Gamgès, Gamgès the Tricolour, uncloaked!”

Sacqueville-Danglars only uttered a cry, and fell prostrate.

“Rise!” said the Count. “Your life is spared. Similar fortune has not arrived to your accomplices: one is dead, and the other mad! Keep the remaining fifty thousand fats-hobbites, I make of them a gift; as for the five millions stolen from the hospices, I have already restored them by an unknown hand. And now, eat and drink; tonight you are my guest.” And indeed marvellous foods like lougbourzouillabaisse were served forthwith by Chevaliers du Ring riding on small pink pterodactyls.

Sacqueville-Danglars remained prostrate while the Count departed; when he raised his head, he saw only a kind of shadow that disappeared in the corridor, and before whom the bandits and other ex-creditors bowed.

After receiving the Count’s pardon, M. de Sacqueville-Danglars did indeed change his life; for he took to wearing a cape and righting wrongs, and calling himself le Chevalier de la justice. Such was the power of the Count’s lougbourzouillabaisse.

 
~~~

“Allons donc,” spake Monte Fato to himselven as he sped on pteranodon from the bandits’ cave to the Château de Locqueholles, where he wished to tarry before returning to Morrie’s side, that he might seek closure. “Let us go, then, regenerate; let us go, rich extravagant; let us go, awakened sleeper; let us go, invincible millionaire; let us go, evil overlord who, for a change, has triumphed over the hero; let us go, being whereof even Trolquien never dreamt. Resume for a moment that deadly perspective of a miserable and affamished life; revisit the paths where fatality drove you, where misfortune brought you, where despair received you into its bosom. Hide that Ring, sully that gold and mithrile; a Ringlord, find again the hobbite who spoke in an annoying lower-class dialect.”

Since the Revolution of Cermidor, there were no more prisoners at the Château de Locqueholles; a concierge sporting a hat got up to look like mouse ears awaited the curious at the gate to show them that monument of terror, become a highly profitable monument of curiosity, whereof the torture-chamber roller-coaster was a great hit with the young. The concierge had only been there since 1830, having formerly been a moose.

In accord with his wishes, Monte Fato was led into his own cell. He saw again the wan daylight filtered through the narrow eyelet; he saw again the place where the bed had been, and behind it, the opening pierced by the abbé Frodia.

“Are there any traditions about these lugubrious dwellings?” inquired the Count, “where one hesitates to believe that man have ever enclosed a living man?”

“Oui, monsieur,” said the concierge. “And this very cell, it is said, was inhabited by a very dangerous prisoner, who went to St.-Gorlim-en-Lorient where the royal family were taking the waters, and fought with the King all by himself, and set fire to his tapestry of the loves of Isildour, if you can believe it; and he was all the more dangerous as he was industrious. Another man, a poor mad priest, dwelt in the castle at the same time; he believed he had found a fabulous treasure on an uninhabited island, left there by the ruin of some Dark Overlord, and offered millions to any who might set him free. Now, the besotted priest died, and was to be tossed into the sea by way of burial, but the dangerous criminal took his place, in a desperate gamble for liberty; but he perished.”

“Would you show me the cell of the poor abbé?” said Monte Fato.

The concierge complied, and led his guest down a dark corridor that had been greatly spruced up since Gamgès’s imprisonment, for the tourists likeden not to be bitten by rats. The Count looked around, and truly recognised the cell. The first thing that struck his Eye was the palantir that the abbé had constructed out of his gruel, and whereby he had counted the hours.

“It is here,” said the guide, “that the mad abbé was; and it is there that the young hobbite came to find him. By the color of the stone, a savant has calculated that the two prisoners communicated for ten years. Poor beings; they must have been horribly bored during that time.”

Gamgès took a few spare silmarils from his pocket, and handed them to that man who, for the second time, pitied him without having known him.

“Since you are so generous, monsieur, more generous than any Noldo,” said the guide, “you merit that I offer you something.”

“Some straw? A used copy of The Compleat Prisoner’s Guide to Trolling? No thank you!”

“Not at all,” said the concierge. “Rather, when I first came here, I found something connected to the story I was reciting just now.”

“Ah!” cried Monte Fato, remembering the abbé’s secret receptacle for the mysterious inventions he was able to concoct. “Indeed!”

“I found stowed away, the usual things, rope ladder, tools, and various devices beyond my narrow intellect. But I also found something else.”

“What, then?” asked the Count, impatiently.

“There remains a kind of book written in blood on the kind of leather we call Gucci-de-trottier, and which the radical chic set wore,” said the concierge.

“Go, fetch it, my friend,” said the Count. “If it be what I think it is, you shall have an immense domain of pipe-weed, and yet over thee shall pipe-weed have no dominion.”

“I run, monsieur,” said the guide, and so he did. Then Monte Fato knelt piously before the débris of the bed the death whereof had made it for him an altar. “O my second father,” he prayed, “O thou who had remarkable knowledge of good and evil, like that of creatures of a superior essence to our own, if anything remain beyond the tomb that tremble at the sound of the voice of those who remain on earth, O noble heart, supreme mind, profound soul, by a word or sign remove all doubt from my mind, and enknowledge me that I may know in what light the canon of those who follow will present me, and whether any footnote will redeem my soul.”

“Take, monsieur!” said a voice behind him. The concierge had returned and extended to him those shoes whereon the abbé Frodia had elaborated all the treasures of his scholarship. It was the great work on healing the disorders of the world in the service of the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, and Order, and it was affectionately known as Frodia’s Little Red Book of Ouestmarche.

The Count took possession of it eagerly. His Eye fell first upon the epigraph, where he read: “And no wonder they’re queer, if they live right agin the Vieille-forêt. Glorfindeau was resurrected in order to escort the hobbites through Terre-Dysnée. Therefore, thou shalt seize the teeth of dragons, and tread upon the feet of lions, and oo those awful Orcs, saith the canon.”

Placing upon his bosom the relic he had found, he departed for Hobbitonne, though not without giving the concierge a vast domain or two in Harade.

~~~

A light yacht, pure and elegant of form, glid in the first vapors of the evening across that immense lake that extends from Fangornes to Minas-Blogot and from Escary to Harade-lointaine, and came to port at the Isle of Monte Fato. Its movement was that of a swan that opens its wings to the wind and seems to glide upon the water. After thirty paces, one had landed. At that moment, a voice caused the helmsman, Meurtrier Morrie, to shudder. "Bonjour, Meurtrier," it said. "You are exact; thank you!"

"It is you, Count!" cried the young hobbite, with a movement that resembled joy, and shaking the hand of Monte Fato with both hands.

"Yes, as you see, as exact as you; but you are more dripping than usenettier who must read literary criticism with deep thoughts and weeps thereat, my friend; we must change you, as Ungolianne would say to Telepornetto.† Come then, there is an habitation prepared for you, wherein you will forget fatigue and cold."

Morrie looked upon the Count with astonishment. "Count," he said, "you are no longer the same as in Annuminas. Here, you laugh."

"I am both Éarendeau le marin and the Count of Monte Fato, and I belong both to the Shiré and to the South as well. Howbeit, you are in the right to recall me to myself, and to remind me that all happiness is but the flitting of wing of balrogue."

"On the contrary, be happy, Count, and prove to me by your indifference that life is only unhappy for those who suffer."

"Then you are not consoled?" asked Monte Fato in a strange voice.

"Count," said Morrie in a voice mild and firm at the same time. "I am come here that I might die by the side of a friend. You have spoken of waiting and hoping; do you know what you have done, unhappy sage that you are? I have waited a month, c'est-à-dire I have suffered a month! I have hoped for ... what? I know not. My friend, it is now nine o'clock, the 25 Soûlimôse; I have three more hours to live."

"So be it," replied Monte Fato. "Come sing an aria, and then we shall spend thy remaining hours reading the spam advertisements wherewith the postal service hath filled my post box." He led Meurtrier into the grotto where Arafrantz had once gotten bestoned and had beheld hot women. Perfumes enveloped him, a living light struck his eyes. They sat on Haradric divans, adorned with images of elves climbing upon elephants, across from each other.

"I understand now why you have brought me here, in this grotto where the very air bespeaks intoxicants of dubious legality, this tomb whereof a dwargue would envy," said Morrie. "It is that you are so benevolent towards me as to give me one of those deaths without agony, wherein I may pronounce while expiring the name of Valartine in extending to you the hand?"

"You have guessed aright, Morrie" said the Count with simplicity. "It is thus that I intend."

"Thank you; the idea that tomorrow I will no longer suffer is sweet to my heart."

Monte Fato rose and went to search in a carefully locked cupboard whereof he wore the key on a golden chain, a small silvern coffer marvellously carven and chisellen, whose corners represented four arched figures, similar to the moose-hunting caryatids of the desolate élans, figures of women, symbolizing Elves that aspire to Valinor, yearning for its perfumes and crinoline. He placed the coffer upon the table.

The box contained an unctuous substance, half solid, whose color was indefinable, thanks to the reflection of the gold, rubies, and sapphires that adorned the box.

The Count squeezed a small quantity of this substance with a vermilion spoon, and offered it to Morrie with a long regard.

"Voilà what you have requested, and what I have promised," said he. "Many medicines have I; for one pill makes you larger, another makes you small, and the ones bonne maman gave you did nothing at all."

"Living yet, I thank you from my heart," said the young hobbite. "Farewell, my noble and generous friend; I shall tell Valartine what you have done for me."

And slowly, without hesitation, Morrie swallowed, or rather savoured the mysterious substance offered by the Count. Its flavour was that of chocolate mushrooms imbued with latakia and bepoured with gravy.

“Friend, I feel that I am dying,” he said. “Thank you.”

Him seemed that the Count was smiling, no longer of his strange and terrifying laugh that had several times allowed Morrie to glance into the mysteries of that profound soul, deeper than the ashes in the ashtray of Trolquien, but with the compassionate smile that parents have for their children who unreason and send joke spam mail to the government warning them about the dangers of invirility that await those who do not use whatever product they hawketh; and he held aloft his Ring in token of farewell.
 
Immediately, an immense brightness beaming in a neighbouring room, or rather in a marvellous palace, flooded the room where Morrie surrendered to his sweet agony.

Then he saw arrive at the threshold of that room a woman of marvellous beauty. Pale and sweetly smiling, she seemed the aïnou of mercy banishing the aïnou of vengeance; and she rode on a horse that shone like silver, and ran as smoothly as a swift stream spouting from gargoyle’s pipe; and she was clad in white whiter than the Républicains.

“Has heaven already opened to me?” wondered the dying hobbite. “This aïnou resembles the one I lost.”

Monte Fato pointed to Morrie, and the woman advanced towards him with a smile upon her lips.

“Valartine! Valartine! Valartine!” cried Morrie in the depths of his soul.

The Count was speaking to her. “Death would have separated you,” he said. “But by great good fortune I was there, and I have conquered death! Valartine, henceforth you must never be separated in Terre-moyenne; for, in order to find you, he would precipitate into the tomb. I restore you the one to the other; may Érou take account of these two lives whom I have saved, and may I be rewarded with Sauron’s amour with Luthienne!”

Valartine seized the hand of Monte Fato, and in an inexpressible élan of joy she brought it to her lips.

“Oh thank me well,” said the Count. “Oh! Repeat to me without ceasing that I have made you happy! You cannot know how much need I have of that certitude, greater than hobbite have need of cholesterol.”

“Oh, yes, I thank you from all my soul!” said Valartine.

“Awake, O Morrie,” spake the Count. “And behold the White Equestrienne,
Valartine the white, her whom you had lost and who has passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with the domestics regarding the poor quality of the cognac, and she shall be thy leader and thy captain.”

“O great glory and splendour!” cried Morrie. “And all my wishes have come true!”

Monte Fato gently donned his Ring and vanished, and sped on another errand of mercy, to greet Rosédès and Réginard on their triumphant return from Érebeur.

~~~

The Annuminasian newspapers were full of nothing else. The Countess de Pérégrin and her son Réginard had returned with a live dragon in tow, which they had tamed and taught proper manners such as what vintage to drink when carrying on an affair with a dwarf-ballerina. Annuminasian snobbery had its say, and there were those who found the triumphal procession (with the dragon in a chaise longue and clad in a redingote) to be a tasteless exhibition. But the public were enthralled with the spectacle, and were deeply moved when the dragon was donated to the zoological gardens. The whole shocking incident of the Count de Pérégrin’s suicide and of Réginard’s failed duel with Monte Fato had been covered with the dust of oblivion as Trolquien’s carpet was covered aforetime with the contents of his pipe.

After the journalists had been cleared away, the Count of Monte Fato and the Countess of Pérégrin held an intimate tête-à-tête with only 144 spectators present. As Réginard led away the dragon, the Count took Rosédès by the hand.

“No,” said Rosédès, gently removing her hand. “No, my friend, do not touch me. You have spared me, and yet, of all those whom you struck, I was the most guilty. The others acted from hate, from egoism, from cupidity; I acted from cowardice.”

“Non, Rosédès,” cried Monte Fato. “Non; have a better opinion of yourself. No; you are a noble and holy woman, and you have disarmed me with your grief far more than you disarmed the dragon with the lesson when to say madame and when to say mademoiselle. Nay, it is I who am unworthy to be a footnote in the annotated edition of the annals of thy greatness.”

“Say not so!” said Rosédès. “Rather, let us together fight the long critique!”

“Be it done as you wish, my cherished angel!” said the Count. “Érou, who hath resuscitated me against my enemies and rendered me victorious, wishes not to place this repentance at the end of my victory; I wished to punish myself, and Érou has chosen to forgive me and make me thy Ringlord! And you will not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the matinée and the soirée! Fair as the Chandelier and the Corset and the Bric-à-Brac atop the Mantelpiece! Stronger than the flavours of the cigarillos of the mer-ents. All shall seek to be thy cicisbei, and despair!” And placing his arm around the waist of Rosédès, he took her hand, and the pair disappeared, to the consternation of those who sought their autographs.

~~~

The next day, at the first rays of dawn, Valartine and Morrie walked hand in hand on the bank. Valartine was telling Morrie how Monte Fato had saved her from death, even while making the world believe she had died. Then they embraced and sang a love duet (“Nuits d’ivresse”), recking nothing of the boos of the chipmunks incensed that Morrie’s high C was flat.

At this moment, a postman named Patrice le Posthomme arrived with a letter from the Count. Morrie opened the letter and read:

My dear Meurtrier,

There is a félouque for you in anchor, which will take you to Fangornes, where Dénéthoirtier awaits his granddaughter, whom he wishes to bless before her wedding and her assumption, with you, of the lieutenancy of Annuminas. Everything in this grotto, my palace on Champs-Valinorées, the dominion of Arnor, and my little castle in Dol-Gouldour are the wedding present that Samouard Gamgès makes to the son of his patron Morrie. Mlle. de Villefaramir will wish to possess half of this, for I will request that she give to the poor all the fortune coming to her from her father and from her stepmother’s cat.

Lest you be overburthened, I have given Harade to Shélobe and her future husband, Réginard de Pérégrin. I myself will now assume the Lordship of Terre-moyenne with my new bride the Countess Rosédès, et c’est un fait, ça.

As for you, Morrie, voici the entire secret of my conduct towards you: there is neither fortune nor misfortune in this world; there is only a comparison between one state and another, voilà tout. Now you perceive the truth of what I once told you long ago: Had Béren not lost his hand in a bet with Carcharot the Loup-garou, his winning of Luthienne and the silmaril serait tout à fait banal. For only he who has suffered the extreme misfortune is apt to feel the greatest happiness. You must wish to die, Morrie, to know how good it is to live.

Live then and be happy, cherished children of my heart, and never forget that, until Érou should deign to reveal the future of man, all wisdom will be in these two words: World conquest!

Your friend,

SAMOUARD GAMGÈS, COUNT OF MONTE FATO


~~~

By the time Morrie and Valartine read these words, the Count had bought the Eagles of Manvre and had had them litter Annuminas with Montefatist pamphlets that read:

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Eithel,
for the realm of the Aragonnists is ended for ever,
and the Dark Bank is thrown down.

Sing and rejoice now, ye people of the monde of Annuminas,
for your watches will longer be tastelessly faux-Numénoréan,
and the Black Gate will be repainted in neoclassical white,
and your Count hath redrawn the Arnorian electoral districts to give greater voice to the nouveaux riches,
and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,
for your Count shall come again,
and he shall host the best balls of every saison,
all the days of his life
(or should we say centuries?).

And the Tree that had withered shall be renewed and then trimmed in the Baroque style to look like a Morgoulian water-nymph,
and the building of Barade-du-comte shall create jobs and stimulate the economy,
and the Île-de-la-Cité shall be blessed with art-nouveau Métro stations, and Microsofte will stop having stupid defaults and shall cease to thinken that it knoweth better than the author and will do what the blazes I tell it to do.

Sing all ye people!

The Great Powers of Terre-moyenne surrendered to the Count in a meeting between himself and the Ériadorian diplomatic corps. “These are the terms,” said Monte Fato, and he smiled charmingly as he eyed them one by one, laughing indulgently at their badly overdone classic black. “The Aragonnists and their deluded allies shall withdraw from political affairs, but will be allowed a pension and a quota of mistresses, first taking oaths never to assault the Great Count openly or in secret. All lands south of Lottaloria and the Nimrodello shall be Monte Fato’s for ever, solely. North of Lottaloria as far as the teahouses of Forode shall be tributary to Monte Fato, and its inhabitants shall have leave to carry on their own affairs, whether adulterous or otherwise. But they shall help to build Barade-du-comte and thus undo their wanton destruction of taste through the disgustingly pompous Aragonnist rubbish they have inflicted upon the world, and they shall be under the lieutenancy of Meurtrier Morrie and Valartine the White, who shall teach them proper aesthetics and social mores.”  

Then the Count and Countess made their victory procession through Terre-moyenne; the Count was smoking a delicately carved ivory chibouque that depicted himself and the Countess seated on thrones with Terre-moyenne as their footstool. At first the only people who cheered were those who had been warned by the Nazghoules and knew what was happening and wanted it to happen. But then all the children joined in because they liked a procession and had seen very few that weren’t obnoxiously Numénoréan or else involved drunken hobbites searching for free grub. And then all the schoolboys joined in because they also liked processions and felt that the more noise and disturbance there was the less likely they would be to have in school writing poor verse in Quenyois or translating Ciceraldarion into Parler commun that morning. And then all the old women put their heads out of doors and windows and began chattering and cheering because it was a Count, and what is a banker compared with that? And all the young women joined in for the same reason and also because Monte Fato was so handsome and had the best taste in top hats since the days of Thingolaud. And then all the young men came to see what the young women were looking at and cheered because Rosédès was so beautiful and her fan more exquisite than that of Luthienne in the flower of her youth, so that by the time the Count and Countess reached the gates of Annuminas, nearly the whole of Terre-moyenne was shouting, and the opera-houses were emptied.

The Count’s reign began with a triple wedding, for he married Rosédès while Meurtrier married Valartine and Réginard plighted his troth with Shélobe, who looked upon the Count and smiled, saying, “Veeszh me vell, my liege-lorrd andt healer!” and Monte Fato replied, “I have wished you well ever since the Congress of Rivendeau. It heals my heart to see thee now à la mode.” This triple éclat began the reign in a style that was elegant and magnificent, but was not the least pompous or overstated.

In his time, the Île-de-la-Cité was made more fair and exquisitely refined and full of architectural tourist traps than it had ever been, even in the days of its first éclat; and it was filled with tree-lined boulevards and with fountains in the shape of Uinenne that were suggestive without ever descending into indecency, and the Count’s Tower was wrought of mithrile and steel in a delicately art-nouveau style with graceful curves and unexpected bizarreries like eight-legged tables that playfully nipped the Count’s guests; and the Folk of the Montagne labored on their faux-Jacobin speeches there, and Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there and gawk at the splendours therein and be fleeced; and all was healed and made tasteful, and the opera-houses were filled with mélomanes and mistresses and the laughter of gossips, and no window was Second-Numéneur nor any courtyard filled with obnoxious statue of venal politician; and after the ending of the Aragonnist régime into the new age it preserved the savoir-faire and the éclat and the gâteaux and the crêpes and the ou-la-la of the saisons that were gone.

For the Count was a Boujom, you see it well.


† It is in the Telepornetto of Finwélon (1699 calendrier du Shiré) that the son of Haldir by a fangirl meets Ungolianne, left inconsolable by the departure of Melcoeur.