“Take the document,” continued Judge Jarriquez; “first look at the disposition of the letters, and read it through.”
Manoel obeyed.
“Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very strange?” asked the magistrate.
“I do not see anything,” said Manoel, after having for perhaps the hundredth time read through the document.
“Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?”
“Nothing.”
“There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the language is subject to the laws of number.”
“And that is?”
“That is that you see three h’s coming together in two different places.”
What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and sixtieth letters of the paragraph were consecutive h’s. At first this peculiarity had not struck the magistrate.