In an hour my nodules were all arranged upon successive shelves. Then
I dropped down into the old velvet arm-chair, my head thrown back and
my hands joined over it. I lighted my long crooked pipe, with a
painting on it of an idle-looking naiad; then I amused myself
watching the process of the conversion of the tobacco into carbon,
which was by slow degrees making my naiad into a negress. Now and
then I listened to hear whether a well-known step was on the stairs.
No. Where could my uncle be at that moment? I fancied him running
under the noble trees which line the road to Altona, gesticulating,
making shots with his cane, thrashing the long grass, cutting the
heads off the thistles, and disturbing the contemplative storks in
their peaceful solitude.

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."

"Come now," I thought, "these words seem to justify my uncle's view