One Hundred Years of Solitude

that he was the only one who
had enough lucidity to sense
the truth of the fact that time
also stumbled and had
accidents and could therefore
splinter and leave an
eternalized fragment in a
room. José Arcadio Segundo
had managed, furthermore, to
classify the cryptic letters of
the parchments. He was
certain that they corresponded
to an alphabet of forty-seven
to fifty-three characters,