Thus pretty Michal, when she said she could not dance, had already betrayed a part of her secret. When once an old bloodhound has got a scent, he will surely run down his prey!
As already mentioned, in consequence of an unfortunate episode in the history of the city of Kassa, when a sheriff had attempted to betray the city into the hands of the enemy, extra precautions had been taken to prevent similar conspiracies in the future. One of these precautions was that all letters brought by couriers from abroad, to whomsoever they might be directed, should be first opened by the magistrates, and only then handed over to their respective owners. And to take away all appearance of espionage from this precautionary measure, such letters were opened under the pretext of fumigating them to avoid the infection of the plague. And fumigated they certainly were, but the castellan used first to copy them and communicate their contents to the commandant, who could thus keep a watch upon the citizens, and prevent them from plotting behind his back.
Zurdoki, too, during his residence at Kassa, received a foreign letter which was delivered to him open and fumigated.
"You may try and spell out this letter as much as you like," laughed the great man. "I warrant you won't be able to make much of it!"
And, indeed, it was a very curious epistle. In the first place the letters were all so much mixed up together that you could see at a glance that it was cipher writing.
Valentine recollected that the learned Professor David Fröhlich possessed, among other sciences, the key of cipher writing. Perhaps he had communicated this also to his daughter.
So he showed the letter to Michal.
Michal had indeed been initiated into the mystery of such writings, and as at that time there were very few variations in cipher writing, a person who held the key of one of them might very easily decipher all the others; and in fact, Valentine succeeded, with the aid of the key supplied to him by Michal, in deciphering the whole letter.
But now a second difficulty arose. This letter was written in a language which he had never seen before. It was like German, and yet it was not German. He had again to apply to Michal, and asked her if she understood this strange tongue.