The Slender Poe Anthology (19 page)

“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
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 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
²
+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
²
+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 visiter, 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.