{ ss
'mn { anan ... san.'
{ cc

But 'c' before 'a' being never a sibilant (except in some few so-called
'Romance' languages), but a guttural, it was for the moment discarded;
also as no word begins with the letters 'mn'--except 'mnemonics' and
its fellows--I concluded that a vowel must be omitted between these
letters, and thence that all vowels (except 'a') were omitted; again,
as the double 's' can never come after 'n' I saw that either a vowel
was omitted between the two 's's,' or that the first word ended after
the first 's.' Thus I got

'm ns sanan... san,'

or, supplying the now quite obvious vowels,

'mens sana in... sano.'

The heart I now knew represented the word 'corpore,' the Latin word for
'heart' being 'cor,' and the dot--showing that the word as it stood was
an abbreviation--conclusively proved every one of my deductions.

'So far all had gone flowingly. It was only when I came to consider the
central figures that for many days I spent my strength in vain. You
heard my exclamation of delight and astonishment when at last a ray of
light pierced the gloom. At no time, indeed, was I wholly in the dark
as to the _general_ significance of these figures, for I saw at once
their resemblance to the sepulchral reliefs of classical times. In case
you are not minutely acquainted with the _technique_ of these stones, I