** Edgar Allan Poe **
(1845)
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.Seneca.
AT Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in
the autumn of 18--, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of
meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C.
Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au
troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one
hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each,
to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and
exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that
oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I
was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter
for conversation between us at an earlier period of the
evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery
attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it,
therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our
apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance,
Monsieur G--, the Prefect of the Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly
half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about
the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been
sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of
lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon
G.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask
the opinion of my friend, about some official business which
had occasioned a great deal of trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection,"
observed Dupin, as he forbore to enkindle the wick, "we shall
examine it to better purpose in the dark."
"That is another of your odd notions," said the
Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that
was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute
legion of "oddities."
"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his
visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable
chair.
"And what is the difficulty now?" I asked.
"Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?"
"Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the
business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can
manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin
would like to hear the details of it, because it is so
excessively odd."
"Simple and odd," said Dupin.
"Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact
is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is
so simple, and yet baffles us altogether."
"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing
which puts you at fault," said my friend.
"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect,
laughing heartily.
"Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said
Dupin.
"Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an
idea?"
"A little too self-evident."
"Ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha! --ho! ho! ho!" --roared
our visitor, profoundly amused, "oh, Dupin, you will be the
death of me yet!"
"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I
asked.
"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he
gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled
himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but,
before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair
demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably
lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it
to any one.
"Proceed," said I.
"Or not," said Dupin.
"Well, then; I have received personal information,
from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last
importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. The
individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he
was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains
in his possession."
"How is this known?" asked Dupin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect,
"from the nature of the document, and from the nonappearance of
certain results which would at once arise from its passing out
of the robber's possession; --that is to say, from his
employing it as he must design in the end to employ it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the
paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter
where such power is immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond
of the cant of diplomacy.
"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin.
"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a
third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question
the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact
gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the
illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so
jeopardized."
"But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would depend
upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the
robber. Who would dare--"
"The thief," said G., is the Minister D--, who
dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a
man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold.
The document in question --a letter, to be frank --had been
received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal
boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the
entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it
was her wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor
to thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as
it was, upon a table. The address, however, was uppermost, and,
the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this
juncture enters the Minister D--. His lynx eye immediately
perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address,
observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms
her secret. After some business transactions, hurried through
in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar
to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then
places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again he
converses, for some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs.
At length, in taking leave, he takes also from the table the
letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but,
of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence
of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister
decamped; leaving his own letter --one of no importance --upon
the table."
"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have
precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy complete --the
robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber."
"Yes," replied the Prefect; "and the power thus
attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political
purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is
more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of
reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done
openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the
matter to me."
"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind
of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be
desired, or even imagined."
"You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is
possible that some such opinion may have been entertained."
"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the
letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is this
possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows
the power. With the employment the power departs."
"True," said G. "and upon this conviction I
proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the
minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the
necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all
things, I have been warned of the danger which would result
from giving him reason to suspect our design."
"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these
investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often
before."
"Oh yes; and for this reason I did not despair.
The habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He
is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are by
no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master's
apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made
drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any
chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not
passed, during the greater part of which I have not been
engaged, personally, in ransacking the D-- Hotel. My honor is
interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is
enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become
fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than
myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner
of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be
concealed."
"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that
although the letter may be in possession of the minister, as it
unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon
his own premises?"
"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The
present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially
of those intrigues in which D-- is known to be involved, would
render the instant availability of the document --its
susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice --a point
of nearly equal importance with its possession."
"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said
I.
"That is to say, of being destroyed," said
Dupin.
"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then
upon the premises. As for its being upon the person of the
minister, we may consider that as out of the question."
"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice
waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously searched
under my own inspection.
"You might have spared yourself this trouble,"
said Dupin. "D--, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if
not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of
course."
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a
poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool."
"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful
whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of
certain doggerel myself."
"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of
your search."
"Why the fact is, we took our time, and we
searched every where. I have had long experience in these
affairs. I took the entire building, room by room; devoting the
nights of a whole week to each. We examined, first, the
furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer;
and I presume you know that, to a properly trained police
agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man
is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a
search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is a certain
amount of bulk --of space --to be accounted for in every
cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a
line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the
chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine long needles you
have seen me employ. From the tables we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly
arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the person wishing
to conceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article
deposited within the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms
and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way."
"But could not the cavity be detected by
sounding?" I asked.
"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a
sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in
our case, we were obliged to proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed --you could not
have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it
would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you
mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll,
not differing much in shape or bulk from a large
knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the
rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all
the chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better --we examined
the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the
jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a
most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent
disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A
single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as
obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing --any unusual
gaping in the joints --would have sufficed to insure
detection."
"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the
boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the
bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and carpets."
"That of course; and when we had absolutely
completed every particle of the furniture in this way, then we
examined the house itself. We divided its entire surface into
compartments, which we numbered, so that none might be missed;
then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the
premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with
the microscope, as before."
"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you must
have had a great deal of trouble."
"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious.
"You include the grounds about the houses?"
"All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave
us comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss between
the bricks, and found it undisturbed."
"You looked among D--'s papers, of course, and
into the books of the library?"
"Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we
not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in
each volume, not contenting ourselves with a mere shake,
according to the fashion of some of our police officers. We
also measured the thickness of every book-cover, with the most
accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous
scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of the bindings been
recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible
that the fact should have escaped observation. Some five or six
volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully
probed, longitudinally, with the needles."
"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?"
"Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and
examined the boards with the microscope."
"And the paper on the walls?"
"Yes.
"You looked into the cellars?"
"We did."
"Then," I said, "you have been making a
miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the premises, as you
suppose.
"I fear you are right there," said the Prefect.
"And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to do?"
"To make a thorough re-search of the
premises."
"That is absolutely needless," replied G--. "I am
not more sure that I breathe than I am that the letter is not
at the Hotel."
"I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin.
"You have, of course, an accurate description of the
letter?"
"Oh yes!" --And here the Prefect, producing a
memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of
the internal, and especially of the external appearance of the
missing document. Soon after finishing the perusal of this
description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in
spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before.
In about a month afterwards he paid us another
visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. He took a
pipe and a chair and entered into some ordinary conversation.
At length I said,--
"Well, but G--, what of the purloined letter? I
presume you have at last made up your mind that there is no
such thing as overreaching the Minister?"
"Confound him, say I --yes; I made the
reexamination, however, as Dupin suggested --but it was all
labor lost, as I knew it would be."
"How much was the reward offered, did you say?"
asked Dupin.
"Why, a very great deal --a very liberal reward
--I don't like to say how much, precisely; but one thing I will
say, that I wouldn't mind giving my individual check for fifty
thousand francs to any one who could obtain me that letter. The
fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance every day;
and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were trebled,
however, I could do no more than I have done."
"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the
whiffs of his meerschaum, "I really --think, G--, you have not
exerted yourself--to the utmost in this matter. You might --do
a little more, I think, eh?"
"How? --In what way?"
"Why --puff, puff --you might --puff, puff
--employ counsel in the matter, eh? --puff, puff, puff. Do you
remember the story they tell of Abernethy?"
"No; hang Abernethy!"
"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon
a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging
upon this Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this
purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he
insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary
individual.
"'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his
symptoms are such and such; now, doctor, what would you have
directed him to take?'
"'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be
sure.'"
"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I
am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would
really give fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me
in the matter."
"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer,
and producing a check-book, "you may as well fill me up a check
for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand
you the letter."
I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely
thunderstricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and
motionless, less, looking incredulously at my friend with open
mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then,
apparently in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several
pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a check
for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to
Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and deposited it in his
pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a
letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary grasped it
in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand,
cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and
struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from
the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable
since Dupin had requested him to fill up the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into some
explanations.
"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly
able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning,
and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem
chiefly to demand. Thus, when G-- detailed to us his mode of
searching the premises at the Hotel D--, I felt entire
confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation --so
far as his labors extended."
"So far as his labors extended?" said I.
"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not
only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute
perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of
their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have
found it."
I merely laughed --but he seemed quite serious in
all that he said.
"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in
their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being
inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of
highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of
Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But
he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the
matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than
he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at
guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal
admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles.
One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and
demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the
guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one.
The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of
course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere
observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his
opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent,
and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?'
Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second
trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had
them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is
just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I
will therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and wins. Now,
with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have
reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I
guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself
upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as
did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest
that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide
upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even'
guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the
schoolboy, whom his fellows termed "lucky," --what, in its last
analysis, is it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the
reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent."
"It is," said Dupin;" and, upon inquiring of the
boy by what means he effected the thorough identification in
which his success consisted, I received answer as follows:
'When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good,
or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the
moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as
possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then
wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or
heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' This
response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the
spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucauld,
to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."
"And the identification," I said, "of the
reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if I
understand you aright upon the accuracy with which the
opponent's intellect is admeasured."
"For its practical value it depends upon this,"
replied Dupin; and the Prefect and his cohort fall so
frequently, first, by default of this identification, and,
secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through
non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are
engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and,
in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in
which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much
--that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that
of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is
diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of
course. This always happens when it is above their own, and
very usually when it is below. They have no variation of
principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by some
unusual emergency --by some extraordinary reward --they extend
or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching
their principles. What, for example, in this case of D--, has
been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this
boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the
microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into
registered square inches --what is it all but an exaggeration
of the application of the one principle or set of principles of
search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding
human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in the long routine of
his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he has taken it
for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter, --not
exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg --but, at least,
in some hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought
which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole
bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that such
recherches nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary
occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects;
for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article
concealed --a disposal of it in this recherche manner, --is, in
the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its
discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether
upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers;
and where the case is of importance --or, what amounts to the
same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of
magnitude, --the qualities in question have never been known to
fall. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that,
had the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the limits
of the Prefect's examination --in other words, had the
principle of its concealment been comprehended within the
principles of the Prefect --its discovery would have been a
matter altogether beyond question. This functionary, however,
has been thoroughly mystified; and the remote source of his
defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool,
because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets;
this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non
distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are
fools."
"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are
two brothers, I know; and both have attained reputation in
letters. The Minister I believe has written learnedly on the
Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet."
"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As
poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere
mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus
would have been at the mercy of the Prefect."
"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions,
which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do
not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries.
The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason
par excellence.
"'Il y a a parier,'" replied Dupin, quoting from
Chamfort, "'que toute idee publique, toute convention recue,
est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre.' The
mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate
the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the
less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy
a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term
'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the
originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of
any importance --if words derive any value from applicability
--then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin,
'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' religion or 'homines
honesti,' a set of honorable men."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with
some of the algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value,
of that reason which is cultivated in any especial form other
than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in particular, the
reason educed by mathematical study. The mathematics are the
science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely
logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great
error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called
pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is
so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with
which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms
of general truth. What is true of relation --of form and
quantity --is often grossly false in regard to morals, for
example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that
the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also
the axiom falls. In the consideration of motive it falls; for
two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a
value when united, equal to the sum of their values apart.
There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only
truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician
argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were
of an absolutely general applicability --as the world indeed
imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,'
mentions an analogous source of error, when he says that
'although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget
ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as
existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are
Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the
inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as
through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I
never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be
trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely
hold it as a point of his faith that x squared + px was
absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these
gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you
believe occasions may occur where x squared + px is not
altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand what you
mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for,
beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.
I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely
laughed at his last observations, "that if the Minister had
been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been
under no necessity of giving me this check. I knew him,
however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were
adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by
which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as
a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fall to
be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not
have failed to anticipate --and events have proved that he did
not fail to anticipate --the waylayings to which he was
subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the secret
investigations of his premises. His frequent absences from home
at night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids to
his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity
for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to
impress them with the conviction to which G--, in fact, did
finally arrive --the conviction that the letter was not upon
the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought,
which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now,
concerning the invariable principle of policial action in
searches for articles concealed --I felt that this whole train
of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the
Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the
ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so
weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of
his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the
eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of
the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a
matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to
it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how
desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our
first interview, that it was just possible this mystery
troubled him so much on account of its being so very
self-evident."
"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I
really thought he would have fallen into convulsions."
"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds
with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some
color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that
metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as
well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis
inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and
metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large
body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one,
and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this
difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the
vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more
eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are
yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of
hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again:
have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop
doors, are the most attractive of attention?"
"I have never given the matter a thought," I
said.
"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which
is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to
find a given word --the name of town, river, state or empire
--any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of
the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass
his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names;
but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large
characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like
the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street,
escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and
here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the
moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass
unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and
too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears,
somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He
never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister
had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the
whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that
world from perceiving it.
"But the more I reflected upon the daring,
dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact
that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended
to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence,
obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the
limits of that dignitary's ordinary search --the more satisfied
I became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had
resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not
attempting to conceal it at all.
"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a
pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by
accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I found D-- at home,
yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be
in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really
energetic human being now alive --but that is only when nobody
sees him.
"To be even with him, I complained of my weak
eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover
of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the apartment,
while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my
host.
"I paid special attention to a large writing-table
near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some
miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical
instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and
very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular
suspicion.
"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the
room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard,
that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass
knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack,
which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting
cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and
crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle --as if
a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as
worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a
large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very conspicuously,
and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the
minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it
seemed, contemptuously, into one of the upper divisions of the
rack.
"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I
concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure,
it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of
which the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the
seal was large and black, with the D-- cipher; there it was
small and red, with the ducal arms of the S-- family. Here, the
address, to the Minister, was diminutive and feminine; there
the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly
bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of
correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these
differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn
condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true
methodical habits of D--, and so suggestive of a design to
delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the
document; these things, together with the hyperobtrusive
situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor,
and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I
had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly
corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention
to suspect.
"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and,
while I maintained a most animated discussion with the
Minister, on a topic which I knew well had never failed to
interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted
upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its
external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell,
at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial
doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of
the paper, I observed them to be more chafed than seemed
necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is
manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and
pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in
the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold.
This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the
letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed,
and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and took my
departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.
"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when
we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding
day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a
pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel,
and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the
shoutings of a mob. D-- rushed to a casement, threw it open,
and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack,
took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a
fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had
carefully prepared at my lodgings; imitating the D-- cipher,
very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.
"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned
by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it
among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to
have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his
way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D-came from
the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon
securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him
farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay.
"But what purpose had you," I asked, in replacing
the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at
the first visit, to have seized it openly, and departed?"
"D--," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a
man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted
to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I
might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good
people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an
object apart from these considerations. You know my political
prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady
concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his
power. She has now him in hers; since, being unaware that the
letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his
exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself,
at once, to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will
not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to
talk about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds of
climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to
get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no
sympathy --at least no pity --for him who descends. He is the
monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess,
however, that I should like very well to know the precise
character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom the
Prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced to opening
the letter which I left for him in the card-rack."
"How? did you put any thing particular in it?"
"Why --it did not seem altogether right to leave
the interior blank --that would have been insulting. D--, at
Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite
good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would
feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who
had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue.
He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the
middle of the blank sheet the words--
--Un dessein si funeste,
S'il n'est digne d'Atree, est digne de Thyeste.
They are to be found in Crebillon's 'Atree.'"