Bacq

“Now I must do you a discourtesy,” said M. de Villefaramir.  “I hope this may be forgiven in one

who has had the civility not to order your execution when you had not been convicted of any

crime.  But alas, you must spend the night in a prison – strictly pro forma, sine veritate

sententiarum mearum sí ma nin i yulma enquantuva, you will be released tomorrow.”

“Very well,” replied Gamgès.  “I have endured at sea far worse things than one night’s

imprisonment.”

Villefaramir rang a bell, and a guard arrived.  “Blindfold this guest,” said the steuard.  

“Securely, but not so to discomfort him.  Lead him to …” And here he whispered something in the

guard’s ear that Gamgès could not hear.  The guard blindfolded Samouard and gently but firmly led

him to his cell, which was clean but a little mephitic, and altogether lacking in good “herbe.”

Some hours later, several guards led by two unpleasant brutes opened the door to Gamgès’s cell

and led him out.

“I am free!” he cried, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks.  “Samouard is free!”  His

transports were abruptly interrupted when a heavy hand covered his mouth.

“Hola, you rat of the mount of merde, cease your squealing or we will occupy ourselves with you,”

said one of the brutes.

“And it will not be sybaritic, either – at least, not for you,” added the other brute, firmly

tying Samouard’s hands.

They led Gamgès to the seashore and forced him into a boat.

“Where are you taking me?” insisted Gamgès.  “When M. de Villefaramir

hears how you have treated me, he will not be pleased at all, oh non, pas de tout.  Parbleu, your

manners are worse than those of the customs officials in Lottaloria.”

“It is to no place so fair that we lead you,” retorted one of the guards, stifling a chuckle.

“Shall I recount to him a few stories on the way over?” suggested another. “It would not astonish

me if he’s ever been in the charmant Château de Locqueholles before, so he may want to know what

to expect.  This should be fort amusant.”

The Château de Locqueholles! Who had not heard of that infamous stronghold, from which none had

ever returned?  It was indeed one of the works of L’Arthédain long ago, during the reign of

Aragon XIV, when, after the Thirty Years’ War, the minister Arichelieu kept watch on the

Huguenots of Anguemard.  Gazing in front of him, Samouard beheld that mysterious form, that

prison around which reigns such profound terror, that fortress which has inspired Hobbitonne’s

most lugubrious traditions for three hundred years, suffering no rival, laughing at flattery,

secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.  Samouard lurched in the boat, and fainted.

When he came to several moments later, he determined to make a run for it.  He was a strong

hobbite, and owing to his deep familiarity with the sea, he felt no hesitation to swim in it,

even tied up – for his skill with ropes was already legendary, at least among his crewmates.  He

took a deep breath, leapt up with a bound, and plunged into the water; but just as he was doing a

fair imitation of an aquatic Houdini, one of the guards reached in and grabbed him with an

enormous claw, and the other guard knocked him out with an oar.  When he came to a second time,

he was even more thoroughly tied up than before, and the guards were pointing their

blondrebousses at his heart.

“Make one movement,” said the leader, “and your death will be unpleasantly swift.”

For the rest of the journey, Gamgès was cramped and miserable, having nothing to do but stare at

the sides of the boat and think of how poorly made this vessel was and how absolutely abominable

his captors were at navigating. He resolved to keep his eye open for any opportunity, however

remote, for an escape.

Unfortunately, none came until they hit land.  None came afterwards, either, since Samouard was

surrounded on all sides by his captors with their blondrebousses.  They dragged him out of the

boat, crossed the portcullis and penetrated the recesses of the dreadful prison through an iron

gate that closed behind them ominously.

The guards escorted Gamgès down a winding staircase, and into an exiguous cell, with no other

furniture than a rather uncomfortable bed in tasteless Elvish-modern, filled with straw.  It was

so appalling, that even a sherrifferie would have been more agreeable.  They untied him and left

him; the clanging of the barred door behind them was like a death-knell in Samouard’s heart.

He did not sleep all night, for his mind was ridden by the thought that he must speak to the

governor of the prison, find out why he was being imprisoned, and prove his innocence.

The next day, his jailer arrived with a highly unsatisfactory baguette and chocolat, which wanted

no better setting than this definitely not à la mode prison.

“Why am I here?” demanded Gamgès.  “May I speak to the governor?”

“I cannot answer your questions,” said the jailer.  “And seeing the governor would be pointless,

en tout cas.”

“I have done no wrong!  (One can hardly call underage smoking *wrong*, after all.)  M de

Villefaramir promised me I would be released.  For the love of Elberette and Luthienne la Belle,

mistress of seven kings, twelve princes, four-and-twenty dukes, and thirty-one counts, let me

speak to the governor and prove that I am innocent!”

“As if that would do any good,” shrugged the jailer.  “You are mad.  I will send you down below,

with the lunatics, like that old abbé who keeps babbling about a trifle that we would fancy if we

would release him.  Bah! Fool! Hobbites do not eat trifle; we feast on the bûches de Yoûle.”

And so, the following morning, a guard arrived and escorted Samouard down below, into an even

more unpleasant cell.  The bed there was in such bad taste that it must have been dwarf-work.  

Out of the cell came a stench, a foul reek as if the filth unnameable of a hundred

Gauloises-littered bidets were hoarded therein.  

***

Day followed day, month followed month, and year followed year, in a dreary succession of hours

that suffered no measurement beyond the daily arrival of the jailer, who broke the darkness with

a light that wavered like a noisome exhalation of decay, a lumière de cadavre, a light that

illuminated nothing.  Every day, it was the same hard baguette with jam, and the same glass of

chocolat for Samouard; and they had very evidently been prepared by inferior chefs.  No answer

did the jailer ever give to Samouard’s pleas to speak to the governor.

This routine was admittedly interrupted somewhat by the arrival of an inspector of prisons, who

asked Gamgès some pointed questions, to which the latter gave equally pointed answers, concluding

his eloquent response with “Just ask M. de Villefaramir, the steuard du roi.  Parérou, did I

mention that the wine here was made in a pissetoire, and not of the better ones, at that?”

“Yes, you did,” replied the inspector, who then promised he would indeed speak to Villefaramir.  

Thereupon, he left the cell of Samouard and went to see the other mad prisoner, an elderly

Italian savant who claimed to possess the secret of a remarkable treasure, which he would give

his captors in exchange for liberty.  “Ha!” witticized the inspector with the naïveté of

corruption.  “If he were truly rich, he would not be in prison.”  The abbé’s only reply was a

glance of utter disdain.

The inspector’s visit had revived Gamgès’s spirits by reminding him that the shadows of captivity

were but a passing thing.  He resumed the habbit of counting the days, by scratching tallies on

the wall; he made projects for his life together with Rosédès and her champignons.  He resolved

to wait a fortnight for his release; when that failed, he realized that his had been the notion

of a ninnihammier and determined to wait another three months; failing that, he endured another

six months – after all, had not the Gaffier always said that no wine should be drunk before its

time?  During this entire period, nothing had changed, not even the appalling jam that the jailer

served with Samouard’s daily baguette.  Gamgès began to wonder whether the inspector’s arrival

had been nothing but a pleasant dream.  The jailer no longer even bothered to shrug when

questioned about Gamgès’s eventual release.  Gamgès almost forgot his own name, and began to call

himself “N° 1420.”

Samouard begged his jailer for books, for a promenade, for herbe à pipe, for a Lothotrec poster,

for a crossword puzzle; when these things were denied, he asked to be moved to another cell, for

any change, even for the worse, was at least a change.  This too was refused.  Gamgès began to

envy the prisoners communally herded together in the bagne; at least they had company, even if it

be of those of l’esprit d’Orc.  He pleaded with his jailer to allow him a companion.  The jailer

was kind enough to petition the governor; but the latter refused, on the grounds that the rats

were best not all put in one trap, lest they plot a rattolution.  Then, all hobbitane resources

being exhausted, he turned to Érou and the Valards, the last recourse of the unfortunate; but he

remained a prisoner despite all his prayers.  Luthienne, who had not refused the pleas of

four-and-seventy monarchs and nobles, disdained that of the simple mariner.

Gamgès was not an educated hobbite, and so could not distract himself with thoughts of former

ages or of remote peoples; the wisdom of Gandault was to him a closed book. He had nothing but

his own past, so short; his present, so sombre; and his future, so doubtful.  One thought alone

occupied him: the thought that he had been deprived of his happiness without apparent cause; this

injustice devoured him as, in the Angueband of Dante, the pitiless Féanoir devours the skull of

the Archbishop Morgot.  Death, he raged, was too small a punishment for the crime that had been

done him; nay, death was a release, more comforting than the embrace of the fallen elf-grisettes

of Rivendeau.  From this meditation he fell into dark notions of suicide.  Woe to him who,

descending upon the slope of affliction, dallies with such thoughts!  More treacherous are they

than a mushroom blight, that improveth the scent of the fungi, but rendereth them deadly withal.  

Trapped in such a champignonnerie of doom, Samouard began to think of the places behind which

there was a black brink and an empty fall into nothingness.  But there was no escape that way.  

That was to do nothing, not even to indulge in the banality of an adulterous affair.

His rêverie was interrupted by faint knocks that seemed to arise from out of the depths: tom-tap,

tap-tom, tom-bom, ding-dang-dong … But no, they came, not from the depths, but from the wall

against which he lay.  It seemed to the young hobbite as if Érou were finally moved to pity at

the edge of the abysm into which he had been on the point of falling, without a rope wherewith to

save himself.  

“That was the sound of a hammer, or I have never heard one,” he thought.  “But who could have a

hammer in a place like this?  I must discover who it is, et c’est un fait, ça.  Perhaps we can

contrive a plan of escape; if not, we can at least converse, compare notes on cuisine, whatever

…”

Resolving to risk everything to find his companion in prison, he dissevered the handle of a pan

that he had lovingly kept by him all the years of his imprisonment, and could hardly bear to

damage, but for this one hope that filled his soul.  He began to delve in the direction of the

tom-tapping – cautiously, for fear of alarming the other, but steadily. At last, weary and

feeling finally defeated, he sat on a heap of rubble and held his head in his hands.  And then,

suddenly, new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, and words of his own came unbidden to

fit the simple tune:

Frère Sharques!
Frère Sharques!
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
Tuez les Entouives!
Tuez les Entouives!
Hrom, hrom, hrom!
Hrom, hrom, hrom!

He stopped short, for he thought he heard an answering voice, sepulchral as the depths, intone

the words: “Who sings of killing and of Entouives in the same song?”

“By the lingerie of Elberette!” cried Gamgès.  “You who have spoken, speak again, though your

voice fill me with terror.  Who are you?”

“Who are you?” returned the voice.

“An unhappy prisoner from the Shiré,” replied Gamgès.  “My name is Samouard Gamgès, and I was

first mate of the Pharazon.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since 28 Nénimôse 1815, in the calendar of the Shiré.”

“Your crime?”

“I am innocent, albeit falsely accused of conspiring to restore Sharcoléon to the throne of

Arnor.”

“Is Sharcoléon then no longer in power?”

“He was overthrown by Aragon’s royalists.  But how long have you been interred here, that you are

unaware of that?”

“Since 1811,” replied the voice, and its owner thereupon entered Samouard’s cell. “I came here

with twelve companions, who were fed one by one to the loup-garou; but the twelfth had the

courage to lace himself with silmarillium, and so slew the beast even in being devoured by it.  

But tell me, on what gives your cell?”

Gamgès looked and saw to his amazement an elderly hobbite, verisimilarly around 111, dressed in

rags.  “On a corridor that ends in what passes for a courtyard,” he replied.

“I feared it was so,” said the old hobbite.  “I have excavated in the wrong direction, and have

expended all my effort in vain.”

“Mais non!” replied Gamgès.  “I am young and strong, and will dig a way out.”

“I cannot see it,” sighed the old hobbite.  “But with your hope I will hope.”

“And who are you?”

“I am the abbé Frodia, more commonly called 'N° 144,' and was imprisoned for the crime of

supporting Sharcoléon’s vision of a better tomorrow.  Much we could accomplish, or so I hoped, to

heal the disorders of the world in the service of the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule,

and Order.  I could have written a book about it.  In fact, I did.”

“That must have been long ago, before you came here – years uncounted have passed since then.”

“I have written the book in my cell,” replied Frodia.  “And the years are not uncounted, but are

exactly seventeen years, seventy-two days, four hours, forty-six minutes, and forty seconds.”

“But on what material do you write the book?  With what do you write it? And how can you see to

write in this sempiternal and everlasting darkness?  And how can you measure the days at all, let

alone so precisely?”

“I measure time with a simple palantir,” replied the abbé.  “It cannot see very far, but it can

see the sky through the window” (pointing to a slit so narrow a cockroach would have been hard

put to penetrate it) “and thus distinguish day and night, as well as perceiving some of the

brighter luminaries of the nocturnal sky, enabling me to make passable astronomical

calculations.   I made the palantir out of my gruel through what the Eldar call chemingóle, and

I employed the same science to create a light in dark places, where all other lights go out, out

of my fingernails.  As for the book, I am writing it on my bedsheets in an ink made out of what

it pleases me to call mushroom juice.”

“How can you possibly accomplish these marvels!”

“Le bon goût, voilà le secret,» said the abbé with a smile.  “You would be astounded at how much

one can accomplish with so little.”

“Such merveilleux knowledge as you possess must have be obtained from books; but how can you have

read such books in this tenebrous abysm?” inquired Samouard, trembling with astoundment.

“I read them before my imprisonment, so thoroughly that the works of Thû-Cydide, Xenarwène,

Gandault, Pengolot, Camille le Sage, Sharksburz the barbarian not devoid of genius, Moriadoc,

Findégile, Sauron, le steuard Jensen, Michel Martineau, and of course all the other classics, are

graven in my memory.  Naturally I had acquired all the principal languages before imprisonment,

and I use my palantir to study Lower High Mordorois even now.”

“Show me the wonders you have made, I beg you!” cried Gamgès.

The abbé Frodia removed from under his bed a slightly soggy, but functional palantir; a small

crystal phial that glittered when Frodia moved it, and rays of white light sprang from his hand;

and a large book with a red leather cover.  “I manufactured the cover from my shoes and the red

dye from my blood,” he explained modestly.

“You are wondrously wise and learned,” said Samouard.  “Perhaps you can answer a question that

has vexed me for a long time.  Try as hard as I might, I cannot comprehend how I came to be here.

 I would discover what mortal has inflicted this suffering upon me, that I might not curse Érou

for it.”

“Tell me your story, that my intellect may masticate upon the facts and produce therefrom a truth

as veritable as the indecencies of the mirror of Galadriella,” replied the abbé.

So Gamgès related to Frodia all that had happened, beginning with his engagement to Rosédès and

ending with his imprisonment.

“So,” remarked the abbé, “Sacqueville-Danglars knew about the letter entrusted to you by your

captain, and he had cause to be envious of you; was he acquainted with Pippand, your rival in

love?”

“No … Yes!  They dined together at the Pony prançant with Buttrbeurrousse … They had pens and

paper … Oh!  What a ninnihammier I have been not to see it!  Infâmes!  Infâmes! But … how could

they have arranged that I be condemned without trial to imprisonment in this noisome pit?”

“This is grave,” said Frodia.  “But let us return to your account.  You say that M. de

Villefaramir burnt the incriminating letter before your eyes?”

“Yes,” replied Gamgès.  “He incinerated it, saying ‘Now m … your secret is safe.’”

“This conduct is too sublime to be natural,” observed the abbé.  “To whom was this letter

addressed?”

“To M. de Dénéthoirtier, rue Coq-Hurin-les-Clefs, n° 13, à Annuminas, » replied Samouard.

The abbé laughed, if not merrily, at least long.  “Do you not know who this Dénéthoirtier is?” he

asked.  “Dénéthoirtier is the father of Villefaramir! »

The thunderbolt, swooping upon Gamgès and carving at his feet an abysm that opened on the gates

of hell or Morie, would have produced in Samouard an effect less sudden, less electric, less

overwhelming than these words.

“Clearly,” concluded the abbé, “Sacqueville-Danglars and Pippand plotted to have you charged with

treason and imprisoned, and Villefaramir had you sent here to conceal some dark secret from his

past that was contained in your letter.  Voilà the reason why he was so eager to burn it.”

The knowledge of who had effected his imprisonment filled Samouard’s heart with a cold fury.  

Could he but tear himself away from that place of horror, he would embark on a lonely journey –

for vengeance.  His anger would bear him down all the roads of the world, until he had them at

last: Pippand, Sacqueville-Danglars, and Villefaramir.  Then those traitors would die in a

corner.  But that was not what he would set out to do. Far more terrible than that would be his

revenge, and far more pleasurable.  And so he swore an oath that none shall break, and none

should take, in the name of Iluvatar, calling upon him the Ténèbres Sempiternelles d’Absinthe, if

he kept it not; and Manvre and Varde he named in witness, vowing to pursue to the ends of the

earth those who had betrayed him.

“I am troubled to see that I have awakened in you the desire for vengeance,” said Frodia.

“We will speak no more of that,” said Gamgès, with a sinister smile.  “But I would still like to

know …”

“Misericordia!” cried the abbé Frodia.  “If the giving of information is to be the cure of your

inquisitiveness, I shall spend the rest of my days, short though they be, in answering them.  

What else do you wish to know?”

“The names of all the stars, and of all living things, especially poisonous plants, and the whole

history of Middle-earth and Over-heaven and the Sundering Seas and the Champs-Valinorées, and all

the chief languages of Elves, Men, and Hired Assassins, and where the best slave markets are, and

whether Balrogues have wings, and how best to prepare hachis,” laughed Samouard.  “Mais bien sûr!

 And you expected perhaps autre chose?”

“Very well; I will teach you all these things, and far more,” replied Frodia.  “It will help to

pass the time, for there is only a brief time each day when we will be able to dig.”

And so Samouard began his remarkable education, learning everything from the correct

pronunciation of “Yéni únótime” to the intricacies of the Mordorian legal system.  Although quite

uneducated, he was a quick learner, and rapidly absorbed every lesson in philology, philosophy,

science, and haute couture that the consummate polymath imparted to him.  Through constant

interaction with Frodia, Gamgès acquired some of the abbé’s urbanity of speech and lost his

rustic accent; and he never forgot what the learned hobbite told him: “No one will ever take you

seriously until you stop adding ‘et c’est un fait, ça’ to every other sentence.”  

They did not give up their dream of escape. Every night, they spent a few hours digging in what

the abbé had determined through geomancy to be the best direction.  They were always careful to

return to their cells and conceal the passageway before the jailer made the rounds.

One day, the abbé Frodia said, in the most solemn voice Samouard had ever heard him use, “Listen,

O son; I have something of the highest importance to communicate to you.”

“I’m listening,” replied Gamgès.

“I know a treasure that, should it come into your possession, will endow you with power and

wealth beyond your wildest dreams. It is hidden on the volcanic island of Monte Fato, last

remnant of the ancient realm of Mordor, that was whelmed with waves.”

“Bah, you are ma… I mean, indeed?” replied Samouard, as politely as he could.

“After all I have taught you, you question me?” returned Frodia.  “Now listen, and then behold

the proof of my veracity!  I had a decent career as a secretary for the Count of Caras Galadon,

before he passed away and my political opinions got me into water hot with the Elvish

authorities.  In my hours of leisure, my master encouraged me to pursue my own interests in

history and geography, and I explored the archives of Lottaloria, where I found – concealed under

stacks of worthless trash like Il Signore degli Anelli and Faquieux’s The Harlequinades of

Hurin, or the Tragical History of M. de Finrot and Erendisette la Belle - the testament of

Sauron.”

“Sauron left a will?” cried Samouard.  “But how came it to Lottaloria?”

“Many are the amours of Galadriella,” said the abbé simply.  Samouard blushed, and Frodia

continued: “As is notorious, Elrond attained and kept his pre-eminent position in Terre-moyenne

through the simple yet effective technique of poison, being indeed for a time the greatest expert

in herb-lore (though tobacco seems to have escaped him) in the northern lands.  His plans were,

however, rather thwarted by the existence of a puissant ruler bent upon reducing all kingdoms to

a beneficent order: Sauron.”

“But I thought Sauron was evil!” protested Gamgès.

”So you have been taught,” sighed Frodia.  “But when you escape, you will study the matter for

yourself, and apprehend the truth.  En tout cas, Elrond decided to eliminate all his rivals, by

inviting them to a Council; and he made a point of inviting Sauron and his son the Prince

Fredegario.  Sauron, suspecting that all was not Calenarbert cheese, wrote a secret will leaving

all his possessions to Fredegario, and warning him of evil.  This will was stolen by Galadriella

during her night of passion with Sauron, so that not only he, but also his son, perished at the

hands of Elrond’s poisoned margaritas.

“Galadriella took the will with her to Lottaloria, and sans doute would have hunted for the

treasure, had she not been distracted with Dwarvish dissipations.  Therefore it was left to me to

find this remarkable document. I had just finished transliterating it and translating it into

some 15 different languages, when I was arrested.  I offered my captors a state far beyond their

merit and wit, and they repaid me with blague and raillerie.  So much the better.  It shall be

yours, mon fils.”

“How can this be?” cried Samouard in amaze.

“Behold!” replied the abbé.  He pulled out from under his bed a very ancient manuscript written

on the fell of Samouard dared not guess what creature.  Gamgès gazed with fascination at the

fiery letters:

Today, the 25 Lotesséal 3018, having been invited to dinner by His Elvenness Elrond VI, and

fearing that, not content with overcharging for the margaritas, he wishes to inherit my Ring and

reserves for me the fate of Isildour and Anarion, murdered through poison, I declare to my son

and universal heir Fredegario Sauron that I have buried, in a place known to him from having

visited it with me, that is, in the cracks in the Isle of Monte Fato, all that I possessed of

ingots, mithril, minted gold, talking swords named Gourthand, Arquenpierres, One Ring to rule

them all and in the darkness bind them, escargots, diamonds, jewels, umbrellas, opera glasses,

palantirs, and sundry other richesses; that I alone know the existence of this treasure, which is

valued at almost two million gold pieces, and which he will find after having raised the

twentieth rock after the boiling of the thrush in wine (preferably Chianti or Monte-Oiolosseo) on

Durin’s Day.  Two openings have been made in these rocks; the treasure is in the furthest corner

of the second, under the Great Eye; which treasure I bequeath to him in full ownership, as my

sole heir.

“The treasure,” concluded Frodia, “is worth more than the entire realm of Arnor.”

“And is there in the world no more legitimate heir than we?” inquired Samouard hesitantly.

“None, I assure you, mon fils,” replied Frodia.  “After the death of Sauron and Fredegario, an

end came to all the legitimate owners of this property in Terre-moyenne.  If ever we escape

together from prison, we will share our blessing; if you escape alone, it is yours.”

“I have no right to it,” protested the younger hobbite.  “Its totality should belong to you.”

“No, my son, you are the child of my captivity.  Érou has sent you to me in order to console both

the hobbite who could not father children by Cassiopie de Touc, and the prisoner who could not be

free.”

The two hobbites continued their digging as best they could, given the frail condition of the

abbé, who (as he had warned Samouard) was subject to epileptic attacks on 6 Narquélaire and 13

Soûlimôse of every year, on account of some unfortunate incidents involving rings and spiders,

and about with the savant was not very forthcoming. It was therefore vital that they finish the

excavation before the latter date, which, according to Frodia’s calculations, was due to arrive

in 21 days.

“Should I succumb, pick some athélas from the secret garden I cultivate on the rat droppings in

the west corner of my cell,” said the abbé.  “Crush it and moisten it with the appallingly poor

wine they serve here, and then apply it to my forehead, saying the rhyme:

When the soufflé noir is overdone,
and the shadow of death trasks Carcassonne
and all lights perish avec grand fracas,
come athélas! Come athélas!
Life for the dying,
In vin ordinaire lying.

Repeat the rhyme now!”

Gamgès did so, having instantly committed it to memory.

Alas, they reckoned not with the new-old calendar instituted by Aragon XIX, which caused the date

to arrive some five days before they expected it.

So it was quite sudden and unexpected when the pallor of death whelmed Frodia’s face like a frost

in spring.  His eyes gazed forth as if seeing things far away.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!” cried Samouard, grief-stricken.  “Not when we are so

close to attaining our goal of liberty!”

“Liberty, yes,” said the abbé.  “But not for me.  It must often be so, mon cher Gamgès; when

things are in danger, someone has to give them up lose them, that others might keep them.  But

you are my heir; all that I have or might have had I leave to you.  You will be the Count of

Monte Fato, and Lord Adam Madeupname, and the abbé Glorfindoni, and Éarendeau the Mariner, and

perhaps more aliases that I cannot see, and you will excel so much at every field of knowledge

and of human endeavour that, were you a woman, people would believe you a Marie Susanne.  When

you puff on your nazghouleh and imbibe the exquisite Mordeaux wine you will buy with the

treasure, while being massaged by beautiful odalisques, think of me!”  So saying, he lost

consciousness.  Samouard Gamgès tried everything that the good abbé had taught him of medicine,

but in vain; Frodia was dead, or, as one says in Arnor, he had trepassé.

Samouard wept bitter tears, and almost resumed his earlier dark thoughts of suicide.  But no! he

wished to live, to live and take vengeance on those who had wronged him. So before long, his mind

returned to thoughts of escape.  Though the digging was complete, he found his flight hindered by

yet another obstacle, more redoubtable than the castle wall itself: the Silent Watchers.  These

were the most horrible abominations of the Ancien Régime: two white marble statues seated upon

thrones, each with three bodies and three heads topped with powdered wigs, facing inward,

outward, and across the doorway.  They seemed immovable, and yet they were aware; occasionally

they even quoted Racine.

Therefore Gamgès controve another plan.  By now, the authorities had discovered the abbé’s death

and had had him wrapped in a shroud. Quickly, Samouard moved Frodia’s remains to his own cell,

and then hid himself in the shroud, reckoning that after burial he could easily delve his way to

the surface.  The only mild hitch was that he was not interred at all, but was tossed into the

tempest-torn sea: the graveyard of the Château de Loqueholles.