Edgar Allan Poe The Murders In the Rue Morgue and Other Stories

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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
The Murders In The Rue Morgue And Other Stories 54
The Black Cat and Other Stories
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 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 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'Atr e, est digne de Thyeste.'
They are to be found in Cr billon's 'Atr e.'"
The Pit and the Pendulum
Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores
The Murders In The Rue Morgue And Other Stories 55
The Black Cat and Other Stories
Sanguinis innocui non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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