"Jacques Tournebroche," he said to me, "the principal difficulty of
this reading consists in not a few of the letters being easily
confounded with others, and it is important for the success of the
deciphering to make a list of the characters lending themselves to
similar mistakes, because by not taking such precautions we are
running the risk of employing the wrong terminations, to our eternal
shame and just vituperation. I have to-day already committed some
ridiculous blunders. It must have been because, since daybreak, my
mind has been troubled by what I saw last night, and of which I will
give you an account.

"I woke up in the morning twilight, and I felt a longing for a glass
of that light white wine about which I made yesterday my compliments
to M. d'Asterac, if you remember. For there exists, my son, between
white wine and the crowing of the cock a sympathy, doubtless dating
from Noah's time, and I am certain that if Saint Peter, in that
sacred night he passed in the yard of the great high priest, had had
just a mouthful of Moselle claret or only wine of Orleans, he never
would have disowned Jesus Christ before the cock crowed a second
time. But in no sense, my boy, have we to regret that bad action; it
was of the utmost importance that the prophecies were fulfilled, and
if Peter, or Cephas, had not committed on that very night the worst
of infamies, he would not now be the greatest saint in heaven, and
the corner-stone of our holy Church, to the confusion of honest men
according to the world, who have to see the keys of their eternal
bliss held by a dastardly knave. O salutary example, which, drawing
man out of the fallacious inspirations of human honour, leads him on
the road of salvation! O masterly disposition of religion! O divine
wisdom, exalting the meek and wretched to the humiliation of the
haughty! O marvel! O mystery! To the eternal shame of the Pharisees