Chapter X

On seeking a Cloak for this Mode.

Although this polygraphic alphabet of Trithemius’s does not wholly satisfy the needs of letter-writing, I do not yet advise its utter abandonment. For I will disclose another method of using it, which, if I mistake not, is of some value, whereby we proceed thus:

Let the secret be Morn wil comn; for in such form, for the sake of brevity, must we put the secret. Now turn to Trithemius’s very first alphabet, or to such other as you please, and take therefrom as many words as will suffice to make a word of the secret. For example, Rector Imperator Fabricator Rex, for with these you can write polygraphically Morn. For the second word of the secret, make use of the next alphabet: Misericors Discernens Sapientissimus Immortalis. For the third word, the third alphabet: Dirigens Illustrans Decorans Stabiliens.  If it happen that in a single word of the secret the same letter occur twice, change to the next alphabet immediately. When you have collected as many words as the secret requires, break them up into their component letters, and cover and conceal these still further in the cloak of Steganography, by some one of the various Modes which you have already learned in the Third Book. Many further variations of this kind may be employed, but I should like to leave something, in a matter which is not very difficult, to your ingenuity to discover.