"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

but it was friends of mine who actually tracked him down, with the help
of the Wood-elves.' Cf. the first version of the Council of Elrond, p. 401
and note 20. - Gandalf's account of Gollum's own story is expanded
thus:

What I have told you, Gollum was willing to tell - though not, of
course, in the way I have reported it. Gollum is a liar, and you
have to sift his words. For instance, you may remember that he
told Bilbo he had the Ring as a birthday-present. Very unlikely on
the face of it: incredible when one suspects what kind of ring it
really was. It was said merely to make Bilbo willing to accept it as a
harmless kind of toy - one of Gollum's hobbit-like thoughts. He
repeated this nonsense to me, but I laughed at him. He then told
me the truer story, with a lot of snivelling and snarling. He
thought he was misunderstood and ill-treated...

Gandalf still says, oddly, that Gollum 'had found out eventually, of
course, that Bilbo had in some way got his Ring, and what his name was,
and where he came from' (see p. 263 and note 32); indeed the point is
now made more emphatically: 'And the news of later events went all over
Wilderland, and Bilbo's name was spoken far and wide.'
When Gandalf pauses after saying 'he made his slow sneaking way bit
by bit, years ago, down to the Land of Mordor' the heavy silence
mentioned in FR p. 68 falls, and 'there was now no sound of Sam's
shears.' The phrase 'I think indeed that Gollum is the beginning of our
present troubles' is retained: see p. 271, note 33.
From '"Well anyway," said Frodo, "if Gollum could not be killed"' my
father at first followed the earlier text (p.265) very closely, but then
rewrote it in a changed form.

'Well anyway,' said Frodo, 'if Gollum could not be killed, I wish
Bilbo had not kept the Ring. Why did he?'
'Is not that clear from what you have now heard? ' answered
Gandalf. 'I remember you saying, when it first came to you, that it
had its advantages, and that you wondered why Bilbo went off
without it [see p. 242]. He had possessed it a long while before we
knew that it was specially important. After that it was too late:
there was the Ring itself to reckon with. It has a power and
purpose of its own that clouds wise counsel. Even Bilbo could not
altogether escape its influence. He developed a sentiment. Even
when he knew that it came ultimately from the Necromancer he
wished to keep it as a memento...'

Lastly, the passage beginning 'I really do wish to destroy it!' (p. 266)
was changed and amplified:

'I really do wish to destroy it! ' cried Frodo. 'But I wish more
that the Ring need never have come to me. Why was I chosen?'
'Bilbo passed it on to you to save himself from destruction; and
because he could find no one else. He did so reluctantly, but