“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;’—he 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 Rochefoucault, 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 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 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
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 recherchés 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 recherché 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 political 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 any where 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 à parièr,’” replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, “‘que
toute idée publique, toute convention reçue 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 ‘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 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 could 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 where 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 know 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 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 inertiæ, 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 whole 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 fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by
a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the
middle of the mantel-piece. 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 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 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,
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 hyper-obtrusive
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 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 terrified
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 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.’”