aid:

"It is a mysterious language with no apparent meaning, nor have I
been able to find the key to it in any way. It is very skillfully
made, for all the usual tests of cipher writing fail in this. The
person who procured it did not get near enough till the latter part
of the interview, so that he gained no explanation whatever from the
conversation."

"Read," said the Commandant. The Senator waited, wonderingly. The
Interpreter read:

"_Ma ouillina sola ouda ste ensoce fremas dis ansit ansin assalef a
oue lu affa lastinna belis_."

Scarcely had the first words been uttered in the Italian voice of
the reader than the Senator started as though a shot had struck him.
His face flushed. Finally a broad grin spread itself over his
countenance, and down his neck, and over his chest, and over his
form, and into his boots, till at last his whole colossal frame
shook with an earthquake of laughter.

The Commandant stared and looked uneasy, All looked at the Senator
--all with amazement--the General, the Interpreter, the Officials,
the Guards, Buttons, Dick, and the American Consul.

"Oh dear! Oh _de-ar_! Oh DEEE-AR!" cried the Senator, in the
intervals of his outrageous peals of laughter. "OH!" and a new peal
followed.

What did all this mean? Was he crazy? Had misfortunes turned his
brain?

But at last the Senator, who was always remarkable for his
self-control, recovered himself. He asked the Commandant if he might
be permitted to explain.

"Certainly," said the Commandant, dolefully. He was afraid that
the thing would take a ridiculous turn, and nothing is so terrible
as that to an Austrian official.

"Will you allow me to look at the paper?" asked the Senator. "I will
not injure it at all."

The Interpreter politely carried it to him as the Commandant nodded.
The Senator beckoned to the Consul. They then walked up to the
Commandant. All four looked at the paper.

"You see, gentlemen," said the Senator, drawing a lead pencil from
his pocket, "the Florence correspondent has been too sharp. I can
explain all this at once. I was with the Countess, and we got
talking of poetry. Now, I don't know any more about poetry than a
horse."

"Well?"

"Well, she insisted on my making a quotation. I had to give in.
The only one I could think of was a line or two from Watts."

"_Watts_? Ah! I don't know him," said the Interpreter.

"He was a minister--a parson."

"Ah!"

"So I said it to her, and she repeated