TheCodeBreakers
their ears.
He had been the cryptologist of France in that incomparable moment
when Moliere was her dramatist, Pascal her philosopher, La Fontaine her
fabulist, and the supreme autocrat of the world her monarch. Rossignol
was, like them, a superlative practitioner of his art at the foremost court
of Europe in the very splendor of its golden age.
Black chambers were common during the 1700s, but that of Vienna—
the Geheime Kabinets-Kanzlei—was reputed to be the best in all Europe.
It ran with almost unbelievable efficiency. The bags of mail for delivery
that morning to the embassies in Vienna were brought to the black
chamber each day at 7 a.m. There the letters were opened by melting
their seals with a candle. The order of the letters in an envelope was
noted and the letters given to a subdirector. He read them and ordered
the important parts copied. All the employees could write rapidly, and
some knew shorthand
annaabi.ee 
