Would he return in triumph or in discouragement? Which would get the upper hand, he or the secret? I was thus asking myself questions, and mechanically taking between my fingers the sheet of paper mysteriously disfigured with the incomprehensible succession of letters I had written down; and I repeated to myself “What does it all mean?”

I sought to group the letters so as to form words. Quite impossible! When I put them together by twos, threes, fives or sixes, nothing came of it but nonsense. To be sure the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth letters made the English word “ice”; the eighty-third and two following made “sir”; and in the midst of the document, in the second and third lines, I observed the words, “rots,” “mutabile,” “ira,” “net,” “atra.”