Recommendé à M. le Comte de Vergennes, par le Marquis de Puységur, Ambassadeur de France à la Cour de Lisbonne.
The card told more tales than the words written on it. Its color indicated the nation of the stranger. Yellow showed him to be English; red, Spanish; white, Portuguese; green, Dutch; red and white, Italian; red and green, Swiss; green and white, Russian, etc. The person’s age was expressed by the shape of the card. If it was circular, he was under 25; oval, between 25 and 30; octagonal, between 30 and 45; hexagonal, between 45 and 50; square, between 50 and 60; an oblong showed that he was over 60. Two lines placed below the name of the bearer indicated his build. If he was tall and lean, the lines were waving and parallel; tall and stout, they converged; and so on. The expression of his face was shown by a flower on the border. A rose designated an open and amiable countenance, while a tulip marked a pensive and aristocratic appearance. A fillet round the border, according to its length, told whether the man was bachelor, married, or widower. Dots gave information as to his position and fortune. A full stop after his name showed that he was a Catholic; a semicolon that he was a Lutheran; a comma that he was a Calvinist; a dash that he was a Jew; no stop indicated him as an atheist. So also his morals and character were pointed out by a pattern in the angles of the card. So at one glance the minister could tell all about his man, whether he was a gamester or a duelist; what was his purpose in visiting France; whether in search of a wife or to claim a legacy; what was his profession—that of a physician, lawyer, or man of letters; whether he was to be put under surveillance or allowed to go his way unmolested.
When the Chevalier de Rohan was in the Bastille in 1674, 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 cipher, to which he had not the clue. It was too short; for the shorter a cipher 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 the 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.”
The following mystic message is very difficult to decipher: “Tig C f p w y w e. i t ao eovhvygnvrxr mbiddutl.”
Take the first word, Tig, and under the second letter place that which precedes it in the alphabet, namely, h; then under the third letter, in succession backward, the two preceding letters, thus:
T
i
g
h