Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/34

Curiosities of Olden Times Excellent advice; but how far likely to be taken by the eager wooer, who advertises thus?—

"Until your father answers I won't ask you to prove you love me. Tuesday night at one o'clock have a string from the window for letters. If you are not able at one I will wait. God comfort you, my darling wife."

Only a very simple Romeo and Juliet could expect to secure secrecy by so slight a displacement of the alphabet.

When the Chevalier de Rohan was in the Bastille, his friends wanted to convey to him the intelligence that his accomplice was dead without having confessed. They did so by passing the following words into his dungeon, written on a shirt: "Mg dulhxcclgu ghj yxuj; lm ct ulgc alj." In vain did he puzzle over the cypher, to which he had not the clue. It was too short: for the shorter a cypher letter, the more difficult it is to make out. The light faded, and he tossed on his hard bed, sleeplessly revolving the mystic letters in his brain, but he could make nothing out of them. Day dawned, and, with its first gleam, he was poring over them: still in vain. He pleaded guilty, for he could not decipher "Le prisonnier est mort; il n'a rien dit." 22