The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal — Read

One night, about one o'clock in the morning, Fabrizio, leaning upon his windowsill, had slipped his head through the door cut in his screen and was contemplating the stars and the immense horizon which one enjoyed from the summit of the Torre Farnese. His eyes, roaming over the country in the direction of the lower Po and Ferrara, noticed quite by chance an extremely small but quite brilliant light which seemed to be shining from the top of a tower. "That light cannot be visible from the plain," Fabrizio said to himself, "the bulk of the tower prevents it from being seen from below; it will be some signal for a distant point. " Suddenly he noticed that this light kept on appearing and disappearing at very short intervals. "It is some girl speaking to her lover in the next village. " He counted nine flashes in succession. "That is an I," he said, "I being the ninth letter of the alphabet. " There followed, after a pause, fourteen flashes: "That is N"; then, after another pause, a single flash: "It is an A; the word is ‘Ina."

What were his joy and surprise when the next series of flashes, still separated by short pauses, made up the following words: