Chapter 4 - Page 2

form words. Quite impossible!When I put them together by twos, threes, fives or sixes, nothingcame of it but nonsense. To be sure the fourteenth, fifteenth andsixteenth letters made the English word 'ice'; the eighty-third andtwo following made 'sir'; and in the midst of the document, in thesecond and third lines, I observed the words, "rots," "mutabile,"ira," "net," "atra."

"Come now," I thought, "these words seem to justify my uncle's viewabout the language of the document. In the fourth line appeared theword "luco", which means a sacred wood. It is true that in the thirdline was the word "tabiled", which looked like Hebrew, and in thelast the purely French words "mer", "arc", "mere." "

All this was enough to drive a poor fellow crazy. Four differentlanguages in this ridiculous sentence! What connection could therepossibly be between such words as ice, sir, anger, cruel, sacredwood, changeable, mother, bow, and sea? The first and the last mighthave something to do with each other; it was not at all surprisingthat in a document written in Iceland there should be mention of asea of ice; but it was quite another thing to get to the end of thiscryptogram with so small a clue. So I was struggling with aninsurmountable difficulty; my brain got heated, my eyes watered overthat sheet of paper; its hundred and thirty-two letters seemed toflutter and fly around me like those motes of mingled light anddarkness which float in the air around the head when the blood isrushing upwards with undue violence. I was a prey to a kind ofhallucination; I was stifling; I wanted air. Unconsciously I fannedmyself with the bit of paper, the back and front of whichsuccessively came before my eyes. What was my surprise when, in oneof those rapid revolutions, at the moment when the back was turned tome I thought I caught sight of the Latin words "craterem,"terrestre," and others.

A sudden light burst in upon me; these hints alone gave me the firstglimpse of the truth; I had discovered the key to the cipher. To readthe document, it would not even be necessary to read it through thepaper. Such as it was, just such as it had been dictated to me, so itmight be spelt out with ease. All those ingenious professorialcombinations were coming right. He was right as to the arrangement ofthe letters; he was right as to the language. He had been within ahair's breadth of reading this Latin document from end to end; butthat hair's breadth, chance had given it to me!

You may be sure I felt stirred up. My eyes were dim, I could scarcelysee. I had laid the paper upon the table. At a glance I could tellthe whole secret.

At last I became more calm. I made a wise resolve to walk twice roundthe room quietly and settle my nerves, and then I returned into thedeep gulf of the huge armchair.

"Now I'll read it," I cried, after having well distended my lungswith air.

I leaned over the table; I laid my finger successively upon