Selections from Poe Part 19

"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 fail 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 ma.s.s_: 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_ out-of-the-way 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 ac.u.men, 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 policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude--the qualities in question have _never_ been known to fail. 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 parier_,'" replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, "'_que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenue 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 'a.n.a.lysis' 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 'a.n.a.lysis' 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 quant.i.ty; mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quant.i.ty. 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 quant.i.ty--is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually _un_true 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 a.n.a.logous 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 neyer 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+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+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 circ.u.mstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as courtier, too, and as a bold _intriguant_. Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to antic.i.p.ate--and events have proved that he did not fail to antic.i.p.ate--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 pa.s.s 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 a.n.a.logies 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 embarra.s.sed 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 embarra.s.s 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 a.n.a.logous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pa.s.s 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, das.h.i.+ng, and discriminating ingenuity of D----; upon the fact that the doc.u.ment 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 n.o.body 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 especial 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 bra.s.s k.n.o.b 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 doc.u.ment; these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this doc.u.ment, 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 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 facsimile (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 facsimile? 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 30 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 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 anything 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 ident.i.ty of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. 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_."

NOTES

The text followed both for poems and tales is that of the Stedman-Woodberry edition of Poe's Works, in which the editors followed, in most cases, the text of what is known as the "Lorimer Graham" copy of the edition of 1845, containing marginal corrections in Poe's own hand. Poe revised his work frequently and sometimes extensively. The following notes show, in most cases, the dates both of the first publication and of subsequent ones. Familiarity with the Introduction to this book will, in some cases, be necessary to an understanding of the notes. Gayley's "Cla.s.sic Myths in English Literature" (Ginn & Company, $1.50) is the best reference work of small size for allusions to mythology, and should be available.

Both poems and tales are arranged in chronological order.

POEMS

SONG (Page 3)

Published in 1827, 1829, and 1845. The poem is believed to refer to Miss Royster, of Richmond, with whom Poe was in love as a boy of sixteen, shortly before he entered the University of Virginia. The young lady's father intercepted the correspondence, and Miss Royster soon became Mrs. Shelton. The blush, mentioned in lines 2, 9, and 14, is doubtless intended to imply shame for her desertion. The poem is commonplace, and shows little that is characteristic of the older Poe.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (Page 3)

Published in 1827 as "Visit of the Dead," and in 1829 and 1839 under the above t.i.tle. It has been conjectured that this poem was inspired by the death of Mrs. Stannard (see Introduction, page xii).

TO ---- (Page 4)

The original, longer and addressed "To M----," appeared in the edition of 1829, and was republished in 1845.

ROMANCE (Page 5)

Printed as a preface in 1829, and as an introduction in 1831; considerably revised and shortened, it appeared in 1843 and 1845 as "Romance."

11. condor years. The metaphor implies a likeness of time--the years--to a bird of prey. Cf. "condor wings" in "The Conqueror Worm."

19. forbidden things: i.e. "lyre and rhyme." What is the meaning?

TO THE RIVER-- (Page 5)