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
hôtel. 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 paste-board, 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, 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
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, redirected, 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 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
hôtel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interest. 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-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
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'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste._'
They are to be found in Crébillon's _Atrée_."
[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE]
HOWE'S MASQUERADE
One afternoon, last summer, while walking along Washington Street, my
eye was attracted by a signboard protruding over a narrow archway,
nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front of
a stately edifice, which was designated as the "OLD PROVINCE HOUSE, kept
by Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose, long
entertained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old royal
governors of Massachusetts; and entering the arched passage, which
penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few steps
transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small and
secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the square
front of the Province House, three stories high, and surmounted by a
cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his
bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on
the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for
seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver
of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's watch over the city.
The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to have
been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
freestone steps, fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron,
ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
balcony, with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
that beneath. These letters and figures--16 P. S. 79--are wrought into
the iron work of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
edifice, with the initials of its founder's name. A wide door with
double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of which
is the entrance to the bar-room.
It was in this apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held
their levees, with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the
councillors, the judges, and other officers of the crown, while all the
loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But the room, in its
present condition, cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
wainscot is covered with dingy paint, and acquires a duskier hue from
the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine never
visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches,
which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
venerable and ornamental object is a chimneypiece set round with Dutch
tiles of blue-figured China, representing scenes from Scripture; and,
for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside
this fire-place, and told her children the story of each blue tile. A
bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar
boxes, and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer pump and a
soda fount, extends along one side of the room. At my entrance, an
elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest which satisfied me that
the cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor, though
doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by the old governors.
After sipping a glass of port sangaree, prepared by the skilful hands of
Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor and representative
of so many historic personages to conduct me over their time honored
mansion.
He readily complied; but, to confess the truth, I was forced to draw
strenuously upon my imagination, in order to find aught that was
interesting in a house which, without its historic associations, would
have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of
decent city boarders, and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers,
which were probably spacious in former times, are now cut up by
partitions, and subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty room
for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger. The
great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a
feature of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the
house by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square
landing-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A
carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing
dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted
and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the
military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have
trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so
wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The
cupola is an octagon, with several windows, and a door opening upon the
roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may
have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the
tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of
Washington's besieging army; although the buildings since erected in the
vicinity have shut out almost every object, save the steeple of the Old
South, which seems almost within arm's length. Descending from the
cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak
framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and
thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials
of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion, are
still as sound as ever; but the floors and other interior parts being
greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole, and build a new
house within the ancient frame and brick work. Among other
inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar
or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the ceiling of
one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it.
We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony, where, in
old times, it was doubtless the custom of the king's representative to
show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up
hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the
front of the Province House looked upon the street; and the whole site
now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present
court-yard, was laid out in grass plats, overshadowed by trees and
bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic edifice
hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one of
the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses, sewing and chatting
and laughing, with now and then a careless glance towards the balcony.
Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly
gentleman above mentioned, the smack of whose lips had spoken so
favorably for Mr. Waite's good liquor, was still lounging in his chair.
He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the
house, who might be supposed to have his regular score at the bar, his
summer seat at the open window, and his prescriptive corner at the
winter's fireside. Being of a sociable aspect, I ventured to address him
with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical reminiscences, if
any such were in his mind; and it gratified me to discover, that,
between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was really possessed of
some very pleasant gossip about the Province House. The portion of his
talk which chiefly interested me was the outline of the following
legend. He professed to have received it at one or two removes from an
eye-witness; but this derivation, together with the lapse of time, must
have afforded opportunities for many variations of the narrative; so
that despairing of literal and absolute truth, I have not scrupled to
make such further changes as seemed conducive to the reader's profit and
delight.
* * * * *
At one of the entertainments given at the Province House, during the
latter part of the siege of Boston, there passed a scene which has never
yet been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the British army, and
the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected within the
beleaguered town, had been invited to a masked ball; for it was the
policy of Sir William Howe to hide the distress and danger of the
period, and the desperate aspect of the siege, under an ostentation of
festivity. The spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of the
provincial court circle might be believed, was the most gay and gorgeous
affair that had occurred in the annals of the government. The
brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with figures that seemed to
have stepped from the dark canvas of historic portraits, or to have
flitted forth from the magic pages of romance, or at least to have
flown hither from one of the London theatres, without a change of
garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen
Elizabeth, and high-ruffled ladies of her court, were mingled with
characters of comedy, such as a party-colored Merry Andrew, jingling his
cap and bells; a Falstaff, almost as provocative of laughter as his
prototype; and a Don Quixote, with a bean pole for a lance, and a pot
lid for a shield.
But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures
ridiculously dressed in old regimentals, which seemed to have been
purchased at a military rag fair, or pilfered from some receptacle of
the cast-off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions of
their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the
coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by sword,
ball, or bayonet, as long ago as Wolfe's victory. One of these
worthies--a tall, lank figure, brandishing a rusty sword of immense
longitude--purported to be no less a personage than General George
Washington; and the other principal officers of the American army, such
as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented by
similar scarecrows. An interview in the mock heroic style, between the
rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief, was received with
immense applause, which came loudest of all from the loyalists of the
colony. There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eyeing
these antics sternly and scornfully, at once with a frown and a bitter
smile.
It was an old man, formerly of high station and great repute in the
province, and who had been a very famous soldier in his day. Some
surprise had been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe's known
whig principles, though now too old to take an active part in the
contest, should have remained in Boston during the siege, and especially
that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of Sir William
Howe. But thither he had come, with a fair granddaughter under his arm;
and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern old
figure, the best sustained character in the masquerade, because so well
representing the antique spirit of his native land. The other guests
affirmed that Colonel Joliffe's black puritanical scowl threw a shadow
round about him; although in spite of his sombre influence their gayety
continued to blaze higher, like--(an ominous comparison)--the flickering
brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little while to burn. Eleven
strokes, full half an hour ago, had pealed from the clock of the Old
South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new
spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited, which should put a
fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night.
"What new jest has your Excellency in hand?" asked the Rev. Mather
Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the
entertainment. "Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than beseems
my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin General of
the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off my
clerical wig and band."
"Not so, good Doctor Byles," answered Sir William Howe; "if mirth were a
crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new
foolery, I know no more about it than yourself; perhaps not so much.
Honestly now, Doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of some
of your countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade?"
"Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe, whose
high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New England,--"perhaps
we are to have a mask of allegorical figures. Victory, with trophies
from Lexington and Bunker Hill--Plenty, with her overflowing horn, to
typify the present abundance in this good town--and Glory, with a wreath
for his Excellency's brow."
Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one
of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard.
He was spared the necessity of a retort, by a singular interruption. A
sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a full
band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing not such a
festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow funeral march.
The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured forth a
wailing breath, which at once hushed the merriment of the auditors,
filling all with wonder, and some with apprehension. The idea occurred
to many that either the funeral procession of some great personage had
halted in front of the Province House, or that a corpse, in a
velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin, was about to be borne
from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe called, in a
stern voice, to the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened
the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies. The man was
drum-major to one of the British regiments.
"Dighton," demanded the General, "what means this foolery? Bid your band
silence that dead march--or, by my word, they shall have sufficient
cause for their lugubrious strains! Silence it, sirrah!"
"Please your honor," answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage had
lost all its color, "the fault is none of mine. I and my band are all
here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that could
play that march without book. I never heard it but once before, and that
was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George the Second."
"Well, well!" said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure--"it is
the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass."