Há pelo menos duas histórias sobre o tema da "carta em francês (ou algum idioma) que ninguém traduzirá"; talvez um ou outro seja o que você lembra de ter lido.
eu. O mais antigo (de 1896) é "O Cartão Misterioso" juntamente com o seu sequela "O misterioso cartão revelado" por Cleveland Moffett . A opinião está dividida quanto a se a sequela resgata ou arruína a história original. As histórias estão na antologia Obras-primas de Mystery: Riddle Stories , editada por Joseph Lewis French, que está disponível em Project Gutenberg . O resumo a seguir é de uma revisão da série Mysterious Card no blog de Prashant C. Trikannad Xadrez, Quadrinhos, Palavras Cruzadas, Livros, Música, Cinema :
In The Mysterious Card, Richard Burwell is visiting Paris on business while his wife and daughter are vacationing in London. Bored and lonely, the unassuming gentleman goes to the Folies Bergëre, a cabaret music hall, and is sitting in its garden when a mysterious woman accompanied by a tall distinguished man with glasses leaves a card on his table and walks away.
The card bears some French words written in purple ink. Since Burwell does not know the language, he decides to find out their meaning and gets the biggest shock of his life. The people he shows the card to are so repulsed by what they see that they want nothing to do with him. Hotel managers and proprietors throw him out, his wife labels him a monster and disowns him, and his closest friends desert him. The French police arrest him but the American Legation (diplomatic mission) in Paris bails him out with the condition that he leaves the country within 24 hours.
Burwell returns to New York, angry, confused, anxious, humiliated, and dejected, as his frantic quest to unravel the secrets of the card ends in a manner he wouldn't have thought his entire life.
Then, one day, Burwell sees the mysterious lady in a carriage on Broadway. After many attempts he succeeds in meeting her at her house and finds out that she is ailing and dying. She recognises him and murmurs, “I gave you the card because I wanted you to . . . to . . .”
As I said, the two stories are only 31 pages long and I’m not going to spoil it for those of you who haven’t read them, which means I can tell you very little of what happens in the sequel.
The events in The Mysterious Card Unveiled take place 11 years after Richard Burwell returns home. It is a first-person account by a kind and scrupulous physician who is treating him for mental disorder and unspecific ailments. He is actually looking for someone to talk to, someone he can unburden himself on. The doctor, an enthusiastic student of palmistry, takes a keen interest in Burwell when he discovers on his patient’s palm a sinister double circle on Saturn's mount, with the cross inside, “a marking so rare as to portend some stupendous destiny of good or evil, more probably the latter.”
Much happens from this point to the end of the story, which is actually a flashback as the tall man with the glasses approaches the physician to explain everything from the beginning until the time his sister, the mysterious lady, dropped the card in front of Burwell. The woman, with a passion for the occult, had discovered that he was possessed by the demon, “a kulos-man, a fiend-soul,” as she called him, and was responsible for murders and mutilations and other unthinkable crimes.
The secret of the mysterious white card—the cursed life of the wealthy and philanthropic Richard Burwell—is revealed in the end, though, in an unexpected way.
II. O mais novo (de 1937) é "A história mais enlouquecedora do mundo" por Ralph Straus , disponível em Projeto Gutenberg, da Austrália . Nessa história, o protagonista monolíngue recebe a carta misteriosa não de uma mulher misteriosa, mas de um conde francês aparentemente amigável, e a escrita está em uma língua desconhecida:
"He took out of his card-case a blank card—exactly similar, I mean, to an ordinary visiting card, but quite plain. Then he scribbled a few words on it, and handed it over.
"'If you should go to any of the hotels I've mentioned,' said he, 'this may be of use. Often a stranger is not given the most comfortable room.'
"Brassington thanked him and looked at the writing. He did not recognize the language, although he was convinced that it was neither French nor German. It did not seem to be Italian or Spanish, but, as Brassington told me afterwards, he thought, without knowing why, that it might be Russian."
Claro que o cartão não ajuda em nada; muito pelo contrário, todo mundo que vê isso está com raiva e repugnado. Ele aprende a parar de mostrá-lo, mas em Praga a polícia exige ver o cartão; quando ele se recusa, eles o revistam e o encontram, e o prendem em uma masmorra. Depois que ele sai da Áustria, ele conhece um cavalheiro grego educado na Itália, que lê o cartão e apunhala-o. Finalmente ele volta para a Inglaterra, vê um neurologista, conta sua história e mostra o cartão:
"The doctor took it up and examined it carefully. He turned it over and held it up to the light.
"Then he smiled. 'Exactly what I expected to find,' he said.
"'You mean. . . . I. . . .' Brassington sat down and stared at him. 'I don't understand. . . .'
"'There is nothing on the card,' said Dr. Aylmer. 'Both sides are quite blank.'"
"But," I exclaimed, "I don't understand either. There must have been something. . . ."
"I told you," said John Chester, "that this was the most maddening story in the world, and you mustn't ask me any more questions. I can only tell you that when the doctor saw the card it was blank, but whether it had always been blank—Hullo, the old General has obtained his drink! Waiter, you may bring us two whiskies-and-sodas."
Fim da história. Nenhuma explicação, nenhuma sequela, tanto quanto eu sei.