It is, I think, the best kind of cipher ever invented (I have taken interest in these things and studied them). It is very difficult to learn, but I learnt it as a child—and it was of immense use to me at lectures we used to attend at the Sorbonne and Collège de France.
Barty was very anxious to know it, and after some trouble I obtained my father’s permission to impart this calligraphic crypt to Barty, on condition he should swear on his honor never to reveal it: and this he did.
With his extraordinary quickness and the perseverance he always had when he wished a thing very much, he made himself a complete master of this occult science before he left school, two or three years later: it took me seven years—beginning when I was four! It does equally well for French or English, and it pla
