"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 anyone, 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 Bruyere, 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 _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 _recherce_
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 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 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
'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 honourable 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 _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 endeavour 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 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 colour 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 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 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
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, 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 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, redirected and resealed. 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
behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women
and children. It proved, however, to have been without a 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 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-humouredly, 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
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.'