Flavie had, about this time--and it was one of her mistakes--turned for help to des Lupeaulx.
Colleville had a passion for reading the horoscopes of famous men in the anagram of their names.

He passed whole months in decomposing and recomposing words and fitting them to new meanings.

"Un Corse la finira," found within the words, "Revolution Francaise"; "Eh, c'est large nez," in "Charles Genest," an abbe at the court of Louis XIV., whose huge nose is recorded by Saint-Simon as the delight of the Duc de Bourgogne (the exigencies of this last anagram required the substitution of a z for an s),--were a never-ending marvel to Colleville.

Raising the anagram to the height of a science, he declared that the destiny of every man was written in the words or phrase given by the transposition of the letters of his names and titles; and his patriotism struggled hard to suppress the fact--signal evidence for his theory--that in Horatio Nelson, "honor est a Nilo." Ever since the accession of Charles X., he had bestowed much thought on the king's anagram.

Thuillier, who was fond of making puns, declared that an anagram was nothing more than a pun on letters.