about the language of the document. In the fourth line appeared the
word "luco", which means a sacred wood. It is true that in the third
line was the word "tabiled", which looked like Hebrew, and in the
last the purely French words "mer", "arc", "mere." "

All this was enough to drive a poor fellow crazy. Four different
languages in this ridiculous sentence! What connection could there
possibly be between such words as ice, sir, anger, cruel, sacred
wood, changeable, mother, bow, and sea? The first and the last might
have something to do with each other; it was not at all surprising
that in a document written in Iceland there should be mention of a
sea of ice; but it was quite another thing to get to the end of this
cryptogram with so small a clue. So I was struggling with an
insurmountable difficulty; my brain got heated, my eyes watered over
that sheet of paper; its hundred and thirty-two letters seemed to
flutter and fly around me like those motes of mingled light and
darkness which float in the air around the head when the blood is
rushing upwards with undue violence. I was a prey to a kind of
hallucination; I was stifling; I wanted air. Unconsciously I fanned
myself with the bit of paper, the back and front of which
successively came before my eyes. What was my surprise when, in one
of those rapid revolutions, at the moment when the back was turned to
me I thought I caught sight of the Latin words "craterem,"
"terrestre," and others.

A sudden light burst in upon me; these hints alone gave me the first
glimpse of the truth; I had discovered the key to the cipher. To read
the document, it would not even be necessary to read it through the
paper. Such as it was, just such as it had been dictated to me, so it
might be spelt out with ease. All those ingenious professorial