th
his cane, and still thinking of the absurd bit of hieroglyphics. Would
he hit upon some clue? Would he come home in better humor? While these
thoughts were passing through my brain, I mechanically took up the
execrable puzzle and tried every imaginable way of grouping the letters.
I put them together by twos, by threes, fours, and fives--in vain.
Nothing intelligible came out, except that the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth made <i>ice</i> in English; the eighty-fourth, eighty-fifth,
and eighty-sixth, the word <i>sir</i>; then at last I seemed to find the
Latin words <i>rota, mutabile, ira, nec, atra</i>.

"Ha! there seems to be some truth in my uncle's notion," thought I.

Then again I seemed to find the word <i>luco</i>, which means sacred wood.
Then in the third line I appeared to make out <i>labiled</i>, a perfect
Hebrew word, and at the last the syllables mere, are, mer, which were
French.

It was enough to drive one mad. Four different idioms in this absurd
phrase. What connection could there be between ice, sir, anger, cruel,
sacred wood, changing, mother, are, and sea? The first and the last
might, in a sentence connected with Iceland, mean sea of ice. But what
of the rest of this monstrous cryptograph?

I was, in fact, fighting against an insurmountable difficulty; my brain
was almost on fire; my eyes were strained with staring at the parchment;
the whole absurd collection of letters appeared to dance before my
vision in a number of black little groups. My mind was possessed with
temporary hallucination--I was stifling. I wanted air. Mechanically I
fanned myself with the document, of which now I saw the back and then
the front.

Imagine my surprise when glancing at the back of the wearisome puzzle,
the ink having gone through, I clearly made out Latin words, and among
others craterem and terrestre.

I had discovered the secret!

It came upon me like a flash of lightning. I had got the clue. All you
had to do to understand the document was to read it backwards. All the
ingenious ideas of the Professor were realized; he had dictated it
rightly to me; by a mere accident I had discovered what he so much
desired.

My delight, my emotion may be imagined, my eyes were dazzled and I
trembled so that at first I could make nothing of it. One look, however,
would tell me all I wished to know.

"Let me read," I said to myself, after drawing a long breath.

I spread it before me on the table, I passed m