"Never."

 

"And, his supper?"

 

"I don't know. He says he will eat no more, neither shall I. My uncle has determined¹ to fast and make me fast until he makes out this abominable² inscription," I replied.

 

"You will be starved to death," she said.

 

I was very much of the same opinion, but not liking³ 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 allotted⁴ task was done. How to pass the time? I began by lighting⁵ 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 solitary⁶ road, gesticulating, talking to himself, cutting the air with his cane⁷, and still thinking of the absurd bit of hieroglyphics⁸. 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 intelligible⁹ 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.

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