第 二 章 · Volume 2

olume 2

[Redactor’s Note—Some endnotes are by Poe and some were added by

Griswold. In this volume the notes are at the end.]

THE PURLOINED LETTER

Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio.—_Seneca_.

At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-,

I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum,

in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back

library, or book-closet, _au troisième_, No. 33, _Rue Dunôt,

Faubourg St. Germain_. For one hour at least we had maintained a

profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have

seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies

of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For

myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which

had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier

period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and

the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rogêt. I looked upon

it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of

our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance,

Monsieur G——, the Prefect of the Parisian police.

We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much

of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we

had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the

dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but

sat down again, without doing so, upon G.‘s saying that he had

called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend,

about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of

trouble.

“If it is any point requiring reflection,” observed Dupin, as he

forebore to enkindle the wick, “we shall examine it to better

purpose in the dark.”

“That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had

a fashion of calling every thing “odd” that was beyond his

comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of

“oddities.”

“Very true,” said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe,

and rolled towards him a comfortable chair.

“And what is the difficulty now?” I asked. “Nothing more in the

assassination way, I hope?”

“Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very

simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it

sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like

to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd.”

“Simple and odd,” said Dupin.

“Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all

been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet

baffles us altogether.”

“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at

fault,” said my friend.

“What nonsense you do talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing

heartily.

“Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Dupin.

“Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?”

“A little too self-evident.”

“Ha! ha! ha—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho!” roared our visitor,

profoundly amused, “oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!”

“And what, after all, is the matter on hand?” I asked.

“Why, I will tell you,” replied the Prefect, as he gave a long,

steady and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair.

“I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me

caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest

secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now

hold, were it known that I confided it to any one.”

“Proceed,” said I.

“Or not,” said Dupin.

“Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very

high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance has

been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who

purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take

it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession.”

“How is this known?” asked Dupin.

“It is clearly inferred,” replied the Prefect, “from the nature

of the document, and from the non-appearance of certain results

which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber’s

possession; that is to say, from his employing it as he must

design in the end to employ it.”

“Be a little more explicit,” I said.

“Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its

holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is

immensely valuable.” The Prefect was fond of the cant of

diplomacy.

“Still I do not quite understand,” said Dupin.

“No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who

shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a

personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder

of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage

whose honor and peace are so jeopardized.”

“But this ascendancy,” I interposed, “would depend upon the

robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. Who

would dare—”

“The thief,” said G., “is the Minister D——, who dares all things,

those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of

the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in

question—a letter, to be frank—had been received by the personage

robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. During its perusal she

was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted

personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it.

After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she

was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The

address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus

unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the

Minister D——. His lynx eye immediately perceives the paper,

recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion

of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some

business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he

produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens

it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close

juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen

minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he

takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim.

Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention

to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at

her elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own letter—one of

no importance—upon the table.”

“Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have precisely what you

demand to make the ascendancy complete—the robber’s knowledge of

the loser’s knowledge of the robber.”

“Yes,” replied the Prefect; “and the power thus attained has, for

some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very

dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly

convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter.

But this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to

despair, she has committed the matter to me.”

“Than whom,” said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, “no

more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even

imagined.”

“You flatter me,” replied the Prefect; “but it is possible that

some such opinion may have been entertained.”

“It is clear,” said I, “as you observe, that the letter is still

in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and

not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With

the employment the power departs.”

“True,” said G.; “and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first

care was to make thorough search of the minister’s hotel; and

here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching

without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of

the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect

our design.”

“But,” said I, “you are quite au fait in these investigations.

The Parisian police have done this thing often before.”

“Oh, yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of

the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently

absent from home all night. His servants are by no means

numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master’s apartment,

and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have

keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet

in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the

greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in

ransacking the D—— Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention

a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the

search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a

more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated

every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible

that the paper can be concealed.”

“But is it not possible,” I suggested, “that although the letter

may be in possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he

may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?”

“This is barely possible,” said Dupin. “The present peculiar

condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues

in which D—— is known to be involved, would render the instant

availability of the document—its susceptibility of being produced

at a moment’s notice—a point of nearly equal importance with its

possession.”

“Its susceptibility of being produced?” said I.

“That is to say, of being destroyed,” said Dupin.

“True,” I observed; “the paper is clearly then upon the premises.

As for its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider

that as out of the question.”

“Entirely,” said the Prefect. “He has been twice waylaid, as if

by footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own

inspection.”

“You might have spared yourself this trouble,” said Dupin. “D——,

I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have

anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course.”

“Not altogether a fool,” said G., “but then he’s a poet, which I

take to be only one remove from a fool.”

“True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his

meerschaum, “although I have been guilty of certain doggrel

myself.”

“Suppose you detail,” said I, “the particulars of your search.”

“Why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched _everywhere_.

I have had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire

building, room by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to

each. We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. We

opened every possible drawer; and I presume you know that, to a

properly trained police agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is

impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits a ‘secret’ drawer to

escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There

is a certain amount of bulk—of space—to be accounted for in every

cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line

could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. The

cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me

employ. From the tables we removed the tops.”

“Why so?”

“Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece

of furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an

article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within

the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of

bedposts are employed in the same way.”

“But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?” I asked.

“By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient

wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we

were obliged to proceed without noise.”

“But you could not have removed—you could not have taken to

pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been

possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter

may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in

shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it

might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did

not take to pieces all the chairs?”

“Certainly not; but we did better—we examined the rungs of every

chair in the hotel, and, indeed the jointings of every

description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful

microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we

should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of

gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple.

Any disorder in the glueing—any unusual gaping in the

joints—would have sufficed to insure detection.”

“I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the

plates, and you probed the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as

the curtains and carpets.”

“That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every

particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house

itself. We divided its entire surface into compartments, which we

numbered, so that none might be missed; then we scrutinized each

individual square inch throughout the premises, including the two

houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before.”

“The two houses adjoining!” I exclaimed; “you must have had a

great deal of trouble.”

“We had; but the reward offered is prodigious!”

“You include the grounds about the houses?”

“All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively

little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and

found it undisturbed.”

“You looked among D——‘s papers, of course, and into the books of

the library?”

“Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only

opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume,

not contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according to the

fashion of some of our police officers. We also measured the

thickness of every book-cover, with the most accurate

admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of

the microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently meddled

with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should

have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the

hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with

the needles.”

“You explored the floors beneath the carpets?”

“Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined the boards

with the microscope.”

“And the paper on the walls?”

“Yes.”

“You looked into the cellars?”

“We did.”

“Then,” I said, “you have been making a miscalculation, and the

letter is not upon the premises, as you suppose.”

“I fear you are right there,” said the Prefect. “And now, Dupin,

what would you advise me to do?”

“To make a thorough re-search of the premises.”

“That is absolutely needless,” replied G——. “I am not more sure

that I breathe than I am that the letter is not at the Hotel.”

“I have no better advice to give you,” said Dupin. “You have, of

course, an accurate description of the letter?”

“Oh yes!”—And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book,

proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and

especially of the external appearance of the missing document.

Soon after finishing the perusal of this description, he took his

departure, more entirely depressed in spirits than I had ever

known the good gentleman before.

In about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and found

us occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and

entered into some ordinary conversation. At length I said,—

“Well, but G——, what of the purloined letter? I presume you have

at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as

overreaching the Minister?”

“Confound him, say I—yes; I made the re-examination, however, as

Dupin suggested—but it was all labor lost, as I knew it would

be.”

“How much was the reward offered, did you say?” asked Dupin.

“Why, a very great deal—a very liberal reward—I don’t like to say

how much, precisely; but one thing I will say, that I wouldn’t

mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any

one who could obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming

of more and more importance every day; and the reward has been

lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I could do no more

than I have done.”

“Why, yes,” said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his

meerschaum, “I really—think, G——, you have not exerted

yourself—to the utmost in this matter. You might—do a little

more, I think, eh?”

“How?—in what way?”

“Why—puff, puff—you might—puff, puff—employ counsel in the

matter, eh?—puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell

of Abernethy?”

“No; hang Abernethy!”

“To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a

certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging upon this

Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an

ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his

case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual.

“‘We will suppose,’ said the miser, ‘that his symptoms are such

and such; now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?’

“‘Take!’ said Abernethy, ‘why, take advice, to be sure.’”

“But,” said the Prefect, a little discomposed, “I am perfectly

willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give

fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter.”

“In that case,” replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a

check-book, “you may as well fill me up a check for the amount

mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter.”

I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely

thunder-stricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and

motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth,

and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then,

apparently recovering himself in some measure, he seized a pen,

and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and

signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across

the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and

deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire,

took thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary

grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling

hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling

and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from

the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable

since Dupin had requested him to fill up the check.

When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.

“The Parisian police,” he said, “are exceedingly able in their

way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly

versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to

demand. Thus, when G—— detailed to us his mode of searching the

premises at the Hotel D——, I felt entire confidence in his having

made a satisfactory investigation—so far as his labors extended.”

“So far as his labors extended?” said I.

“Yes,” said Dupin. “The measures adopted were not only the best

of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the

letter been deposited within the range of their search, these

fellows would, beyond a question, have found it.”

I merely laughed—but he seemed quite serious in all that he said.

“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.’”

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE

Truth is stranger than fiction.—_Old Saying_

Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental

investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work

which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at

all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my

knowledge, by any American—if we except, perhaps, the author of

the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—having had occasion, I

say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very

remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that

the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error

respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as

that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the

_dénouement_ there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as

it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much

farther.

For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the

inquisitive reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the

meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I

there discovered.

It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a

certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not

only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the

prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his

dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the

executioner.

Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with

a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit

upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was

interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit

from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had

occurred an idea.

Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would

either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty,

or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the

attempt.

Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year

(which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her

father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her

hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts—(he had intended to take

it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day,

only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he

gives all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand

vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of

giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When,

therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king,

and did actually marry him despite her father’s excellent advice

not to do any thing of the kind—when she would and did marry him,

I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as

thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.

It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading

Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in

her mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I

forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch

sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy

conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing,

she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore

her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on

the morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on

account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept

well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a

black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone,

of course) to her sister. When the day broke, it so happened that

this history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade,

in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it

was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a thing very

little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel!

The king’s curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say,

even over his sound religious principles, induced him for this

once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning,

for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it

fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, I think it was)

and the rat.

The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only

put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat

was blue) but before she well knew what she was about, found

herself deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference

(if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green

wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was

wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even

more profoundly interested than with the other—and, as the day

broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen’s

endeavors to get through with it in time for the bowstringing),

there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as

before, for twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a

similar accident with a similar result; and then the next—and

then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch,

having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his

vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one nights,

either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or

gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more

probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father

confessor. At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally

descended from Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole seven

baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up

from under the trees in the garden of Eden; Scheherazade, I say,

finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.

Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it

upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant—but

alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than

true, and I am indebted altogether to the “Isitsöornot” for the

means of correcting the error. “Le mieux,” says a French proverb,

“est l’ennemi du bien,” and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had

inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she

put them out at compound interest until they amounted to

seventy-seven.

“My dear sister,” said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I

quote the language of the “Isitsöornot” at this point, verbatim)

“my dear sister,” said she, “now that all this little difficulty

about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is

so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great

indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry

to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion

of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and

more interesting adventures than those which I related; but the

truth is, I felt sleepy on the particular night of their

narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short—a grievous

piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah will

forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great

neglect—and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in

order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible

noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases)

with the sequel of this very remarkable story.”

Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the

“Isitsöornot,” expressed no very particular intensity of

gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at

length ceased snoring, and finally said, “Hum!” and then “Hoo!”

when the queen, understanding these words (which are no doubt

Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would do his

best not to snore any more—the queen, I say, having arranged

these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into

the history of Sinbad the sailor:

“‘At length, in my old age,’ [these are the words of Sinbad

himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]—‘at length, in my old age,

and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became

once more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries;

and one day, without acquainting any of my family with my design,

I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious

and least bulky, and, engaging a porter to carry them, went with

him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance

vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region

which I had not as yet explored.

“‘Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down

beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of

perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever.

At length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or

humming sound; and the porter, after listening awhile, declared

that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and

then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object

which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of the

horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in

size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a

great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came

toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of

foam around its breast, and illuminating all that part of the sea

through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended

far off into the distance.

“‘As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length

was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and

it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, O

most sublime and munificent of the Caliphs. Its body, which was

unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a

jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated

above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak

that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath

the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and

then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely

covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in

misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from it

there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of

the whole body.

“‘This horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive;

but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with

at least four score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets

like those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around

the body in two rows, one above the other, and parallel to the

blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an

eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger

than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold.

“‘Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with

the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by

necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like

a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the

manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do

the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike,

only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that served

for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick

breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking,

disagreeable noise.

“‘Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but

it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a

nearer look, we perceived upon the creature’s back a vast number

of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much

resembling them, except that they wore no garments (as men do),

being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an ugly uncomfortable

covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the

skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put

them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads

were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I

thought might have been intended to answer as turbans, but I soon

discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I

therefore concluded they were contrivances designed, by their

great weight, to keep the heads of the animals steady and safe

upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the creatures were

fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,) such as

we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so

that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their

heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time;

and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their

noses—a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively

in an awful degree.

“‘When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood,

it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and

emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense

cloud of smoke, and a noise that I can compare to nothing but

thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we saw one of the odd

man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a

trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he

presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents,

that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not

come altogether through the nose.

“‘Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply,

as I could in no manner understand what was said; and in this

difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through

affright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of

monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those

were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied,

as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before

heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels

of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means

of inflicting misery upon mankind; that the things upon its back

were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a

little larger and more savage; and that these vermin had their

uses, however evil—for, through the torture they caused the beast

by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree

of wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and

so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.

“This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without

once even looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the

hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an

opposite direction, so that, by these means, he finally made his

escape with my bundles, of which I have no doubt he took

excellent care—although this is a point I cannot determine, as I

do not remember that I ever beheld him again.

“‘For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin

(who had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon

overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which

immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea.

“‘I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home

to peril my life in such adventures as this; but regret being

useless, I made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to

secure the goodwill of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and

who appeared to exercise authority over his fellows. I succeeded

so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the creature

bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even

went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was

vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was

enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it

comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the world.

“‘Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt

grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,’ said he to me, one day after

dinner—but I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your

majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so

the man-animals were called; I presume because their language

formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of

the rooster). With your permission, I will translate. ‘Washish

squashish,’ and so forth:—that is to say, ‘I am happy to find, my

dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are

now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the

globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will

strain a point and give you a free passage upon back of the

beast.’”

When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the

“Isitsöornot,” the king turned over from his left side to his

right, and said:

“It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you

omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know

I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange?”

The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair

Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words:

“Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative—‘I thanked the

man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at

home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the

ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the

world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we

went—so to say—either up hill or down hill all the time.’

“That I think, was very singular,” interrupted the king.

“Nevertheless, it is quite true,” replied Scheherazade.

“I have my doubts,” rejoined the king; “but, pray, be so good as

to go on with the story.”

“I will,” said the queen. “‘The beast,’ continued Sinbad to the

caliph, ‘swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at

length, we arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in

circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the

middle of the sea by a colony of little things like

caterpillars.’” (*1)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘Leaving this island,’ said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be

understood, took no notice of her husband’s ill-mannered

ejaculation) ‘leaving this island, we came to another where the

forests were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to

pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we endeavoured to cut

them down.’” (*2)

“Hum!” said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no

attention, continued in the language of Sinbad.

“‘Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where

there was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty

miles within the bowels of the earth, and that contained a

greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces

than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs

of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but

larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids

and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and

swarming with fish that had no eyes.’” (*3)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty

mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted

metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long

(*4); while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a

quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the

heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that

when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles

from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object,

however close we held it to our eyes.’” (*5)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until

we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed

reversed—for we here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which,

more than a hundred feet beneath the surface of the water, there

flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees.’”

(*6)

“Hoo!” said the king.

“Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the

atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our

own does feather.’” (*7)

“Fiddle de dee,” said the king.

“Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at

the most magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there

meandered a glorious river for several thousands of miles. This

river was of unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than

that of amber. It was from three to six miles in width; and its

banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in

perpendicular height, were crowned with ever-blossoming trees and

perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the whole territory

one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the

Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it was inevitable death.’” (*8)

“Humph!” said the king.

“‘We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came

to another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of

monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads.

These hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil,

of a funnel shape, and line the sides of them with rocks, so

disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly, when

trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them into the

monster’s dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and

their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an

immense distance from “the caverns of death."’” (*9)

“Pooh!” said the king.

“‘Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with

vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10)

There were others that sprang from the substance of other

vegetables; (*11) others that derived their substance from the

bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there were others

that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that moved

from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more

wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and

moved their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable

passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining

them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of

appointed tasks.’” (*15)

“Pshaw!” said the king.

“‘Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the

bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and

erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of

geometry to the wise men of the empire. The king of the place

having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult

problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one by the bees, and

the other by the birds; but the king keeping their solution a

secret, it was only after the most profound researches and labor,

and the writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series

of years, that the men-mathematicians at length arrived at the

identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the

bees and by the birds.’” (*16)

“Oh my!” said the king.

“‘We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found

ourselves close upon another, from whose shores there flew over

our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and

forty miles long; so that, although they flew a mile during every

minute, it required no less than four hours for the whole flock

to pass over us—in which there were several millions of millions

of fowl.’” (*17)

“Oh fy!” said the king.

“‘No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us

great annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a

fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs

which I met in my former voyages; for it was bigger than the

biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most Munificent of

Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we could perceive,

but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a prodigious

fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth,

shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the

monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house

from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of

which we distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in

a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited

them. We shouted with all our might, in the hope of frightening

the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely gave a snort

or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy

sack which proved to be filled with sand!’”

“Stuff!” said the king.

“‘It was just after this adventure that we encountered a

continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which,

nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue

cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns.’” (*18)

“That, now, I believe,” said the king, “because I have read

something of the kind before, in a book.”

“‘We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in

between the legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found

ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by

the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of

his own species. This elevated the man-animal very much in my

esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the

contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I

found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most

powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19)

which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful

writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of

imagination!’”

“Nonsense!” said the king.

“‘Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very

singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones

were iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he

had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard

a diet, he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more

weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate

surpassing that of the flight of most birds.’” (*20)

“Twattle!” said the king.

“‘I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but

bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and

brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she

was nearly related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate

nothing but wood or black stones. This hen brought forth very

frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they

took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of

their mother.’” (*21)

“Fal lal!” said the king.

“‘One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of

brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity

that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with

the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22)

Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature

that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so

great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed

calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required

the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23)

But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a

mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains

of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers

that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it

would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies

of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision,

that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from

another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of

prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the

mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised

equally for evil and for good.’”

“Ridiculous!” said the king.

“‘Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in

his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of

sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his

dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had

the faculty of converting the common metals into gold, without

even looking at them during the process. (*25) Another had such a

delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible.

(*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he counted

all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was

springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred

millions of times in a second.’” (*27)

“Absurd!” said the king.

“‘Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody

ever yet saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish

their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up and dance

at his will. (*28) Another had cultivated his voice to so great

an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of

the world to the other. (*29) Another had so long an arm that he

could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or

indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the

lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at

his call; and served him for a plaything when it came. Another

took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another

constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. (*31)

Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32) Another directed the

sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33) Another took

this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first

weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths

and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were

made. But the whole nation is, indeed, of so surprising a

necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their

commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects

that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years

before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from

the face of creation.’” (*34)

“Preposterous!” said the king.

“‘The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise

magi,’” continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner

disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions

on the part of her husband—“‘the wives and daughters of these

eminent conjurers are every thing that is accomplished and

refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and

beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from

which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and

fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities

come in certain shapes, and some in others—but this of which I

speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.’”

“A what?” said the king.

“‘A crotchet’” said Scheherazade. “‘One of the evil genii, who

are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into

the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we

describe as personal beauty consists altogether in the

protuberance of the region which lies not very far below the

small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the

direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long

possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country,

the days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a

woman from a dromedary—’”

“Stop!” said the king—“I can’t stand that, and I won’t. You have

already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day,

too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been

married?—my conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And

then that dromedary touch—do you take me for a fool? Upon the

whole, you might as well get up and be throttled.”

These words, as I learn from the “Isitsöornot,” both grieved and

astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of

scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she

submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however,

great consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from

the reflection that much of the history remained still untold,

and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for

him a most righteous reward, in depriving him of many

inconceivable adventures.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM.

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways;

nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the

vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, _which have

a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus_.

—_Joseph Glanville_.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some

minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you

on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about

three years past, there happened to me an event such as never

happened to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived

to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then

endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a _very_

old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change

these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and

to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion,

and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look

over this little cliff without getting giddy?”

The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown

himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung

over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his

elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this “little cliff” arose,

a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some

fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath

us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of

its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous

position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the

ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance

upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of

the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger

from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason

myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the

distance.

“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have

brought you here that you might have the best possible view of

the scene of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole

story with the spot just under your eye.”

“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which

distinguished him—“we are now close upon the Norwegian coast—in

the sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of

Nordland—and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon

whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up

a little higher—hold on to the grass if you feel giddy—so—and

look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose

waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the

Nubian geographer’s account of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama

more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To

the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay

outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black

and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more

forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its

white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just

opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a

distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible

a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position

was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was

enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of

smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at

various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more

distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about

it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward

that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed

trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight,

still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a

short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction—as

well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was

little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by

the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to

the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm,

Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off—between Moskoe and

Vurrgh—are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These

are the true names of the places—but why it has been thought

necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can

understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in the

water?”

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to

which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we

had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from

the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and

gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of

buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I

perceived that what seamen term the _chopping_ character of the

ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set

to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a

monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its

headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as

Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between

Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the

vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand

conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied

convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and

innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the

eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes