Wanted: Help!

[Einhard]

Salvete all,

Long time no, er, type. I've been busy with other things over the past few weeks so haven't been able to give as much time to the old Latin as I would have liked, but now that I'm back, a deluge of queries and questions can be expected!! First up, does anyone have any idea of the derivation of comperi? I'm thinking componere, to put together, compose, but if it is, it's in a form I don't recognise. To give some context, it appears as "Itaque, ut comperi legatos Allobrogum belli Transalpini..." in Cicero's In Catilnam Oratio, excerpted in Wheelock. I'd give the whole sentence but I want to try and figure out the rest myself! Thanks in advance,

Einhard.

[modus.irrealis]

It's the perfect tense of comperio.

[Einhard]

I hate it when I get stumped by something that, in retrospect, should really have been obvious! That'll show me for ignoring Latin over the past few weeks! Thanks...

[modus.irrealis]

I've done much worse than that, so don't worry. In case you don't know about it, Whitaker's Words dictionary is useful for situations like this, although it can be really easy to rely on it too much.