WHAT is the matter?"cried the cook,entering the room;"when will master have his dinner?""Never."
"And,his supper?"
"I don't know.He says he will eat no more,neither shall I.My uncle has determined to fast and make me fast until he makes out this abominable inscription,"I replied.
"You will be starved to death,"she said.
I was very much of the same opinion,but not liking to say so,sent her away,and began some of my usual work of classification.
But try as I might,nothing could keep me from thinking alternately of the stupid manuscript and of the pretty Gretchen.
Several times I thought of going out,but my uncle would have been angry at my absence.At the end of an hour,my allotted task was done.
How to pass the time?I began by lighting my pipe.Like all other students,I delighted in tobacco;and,seating myself in the great armchair,I began to think.
Where was my uncle?I could easily imagine him tearing along some solitary road,gesticulating,talking to himself,cutting the air with 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 ice in English;the eighty-fourth,eighty-fifth,and eighty-sixth,the word sir;then at last I seemed to find the Latin words rota,mutabile,ira,nec,atra.
"Ha!there seems to be some truth in my uncle's notion,thought I.
Then again I seemed to find the word luco,which means sacred wood.Then in the third line I appeared to make out labiled,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 Isaw 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 Itrembled 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 my finger over each letter,I spelled it through;in my excitement I read it out.
What horror and stupefaction took possession of my soul.I was like a man who had received a knock-down blow.Was it possible that I really read the terrible secret,and it had really been accomplished!A man had dared to do-what?
No living being should ever know.
"Never!"cried I,jumping up."Never shall my uncle be made aware of the dread secret.He would be quite capable of undertaking the terrible journey.Nothing would check him,nothing stop him.Worse,he would compel me to accompany him,and we should be lost forever.But no;such folly and madness cannot be allowed."I was almost beside myself with rage and fury.
"My worthy uncle is already nearly mad,"I cried aloud."This would finish him.By some accident he may make the discovery;in which case,we are both lost.Perish the fearful secret-let the flames forever bury it in oblivion."I snatched up book and parchment,and was about to cast them into the fire,when the door opened and my uncle entered.
I had scarcely time to put down the wretched documents before my uncle was by my side.He was profoundly absorbed.His thoughts were evidently bent on the terrible parchment.Some new combination had probably struck him while taking his walk.
He seated himself in his armchair,and with a pen began to make an algebraical calculation.I watched him with anxious eyes.My flesh crawled as it became probable that he would discover the secret.
His combinations I knew now were useless,I having discovered the one only clue.For three mortal hours he continued without speaking a word,without raising his head,scratching,rewriting,calculating over and over again.I knew that in time he must hit upon the right phrase.The letters of every alphabet have only a certain number of combinations.But then years might elapse before he would arrive at the correct solution.
Still time went on;night came,the sounds in the streets ceased-and still my uncle went on,not even answering our worthy cook when she called us to supper.
I did not dare to leave him,so waved her away,and at last fell asleep on the sofa.