Chapter III

On Preparation of Words such as is clothed in Real Discourse,
considered with reference to the Initial letter.

Of this class and Mode the exposition given in the last preceding Book is sufficiently full. And yet there remain a few remarks to be made very briefly, and a few facts that were there omitted come up for insertion here.

Dismissing, then, both the direct Preparation which makes use of the more Common method and that which has its progress, as far as the letters of the secret are concerned, restricted to the devices of Strewing already mentioned, I shall in this chapter take up Arbitrary Preparation performed through the selection of a Key; which method, as I have said, was omitted by Trithemius.

This form of Preparation depends o a Key, which, in the first letters of each following Consignificant word, or word contributing to the secret, in such wise that is each case as many as are the points in the alphabet by which the second of the two letters of the key word is removed from the first, by so many places is the Consignificant word removed, after intervening Non-significant words,  from the key word itself. Let us take, for example, the text Hostis retrocessit. This using the alphabet

a b c d e f g h I l m n o p q r s t u x,

we conceal by this Mode thus; Since, in the first Non-significant word Magnifice, the first two letters are M and A, and A is ten points removed from M, nine Non-significant words must be allowed to intervene, and only then, in the tenth place, is the Consignificant word Hinricus to be written. And since in this word I follows H, no Non-significant word should be inserted, but in the next place must be written the  consignificant word Omnibus. Now if you continue thus, you will have the complete secret formed out of the following scheme of words:

“Magnifice Domine; heri ad me venit noster amicus bonus ille Hinricus, omnibus pene vestimentis suppellectilique exutus anesandissimis illis nebulonibus, qui vias nunc ita obsident, ut penelibertas commeandi fuccisa fit. Tempora nunc exulceratilsima sunt, et pejora fiunt indies. Quid agendum? Supremus ni rebus desperatis remedium afferat, de nobis omnibus omnino actum erit. Interia viriliter agamus, nostra faciamus, proximo luccurramus. Ego pro mea tenuitate feci, ut misellus ille itineri se rursus accingere hodie ocyus potuerit, meliori faxit Deus ter Opt: Max: omine, quam cessitante. Ejus quin curam tu suscipias quoque, sane nullus dubito.  Sic ille tamen trepidat anxius, Vale.

To continue, I would advise that you select for key words such words as do not stand at too great a distance from one another.