second half of The Purloined Letter
by
Edgar Allan Poe -
1845
"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 fails. In the consideration of
motive it fails; 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 would be trusted out of equal
roots, or one
who did not
clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x2 + 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 when x2 + 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 fail to be aware of the
ordinary political modes of action. He could not fail to be anticipate - and events have proved 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 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 political 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, than 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 whole apartment, while seemingly intent
only upon the conversation of my host.
"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near where 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. The 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 uppermost 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 to us so
minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D - - cipher; there it was small and
read, 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, upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention
really riveted upon the letter. In 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 large 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 terrified mod. 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
afterward 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 Catalanisaid 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 that 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'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.'
They are to be found in Crébillon's 'Atrée.'"