Chapter VIII: Psychological Studies 390 (3)

65. On the way two little accidents happened to him which colored his musings in a very different manner. For, first he fell in with the track of a patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards, although it lay out of his direction. And this spirited him up; at least he had confused his trail; for he was still possessed with the idea of people tracking him all about Paris over the snow, and collaring him next morning before he was awake. The other matter affected him quite differently. He passed a street corner, where, not so long before, a woman and her child had been devoured by wolves. This was just the kind of weather, he reflected, when wolves might take it into their heads to enter Paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streets would run the chance of something worse than a mere scare. He stopped and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest--it was a center where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked down them all, one after another, and held his breath to listen, lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow or hear the sound of howling between him and the river. He remembered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the spot, while he was yet a child. His mother! If he only knew where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter. He determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go and see her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at his destination--his last hope for the night.

66. The house was quite dark, like its neighbors; and yet after a few taps, he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious voice asking who was there. The poet named himself in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation, the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with his nose. He could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be easily broken into, and thither he betook himself promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he might pass the rest of the black hours and whence he should issue, on the morrow, with an armful of valuable plate. He even considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and as he was calling the roll of his favorite dainties, roast fish presented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and horror.

67. “I shall never finish that ballad,” he thought to himself; and then, with another shudder at the recollection, “Oh, damn his fat head!” he repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.

68. The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Villon made a preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point of attack, a little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a curtained window.

69. “The devil!” he thought. “People awake! Some student or some saint, confound the crew! Can’t they get drunk and lie in bed snoring like their neighbors! What’s the good of curfew, and poor devils of bellringers jumping at a rope’s end in bell-towers? What’s the use of day, if people sit up all night! The gripes to them!” He grinned as he saw where his logic was leading him. “Every man to his business, after all,” added he, “and if they’re awake, by the Lord, I may come by a supper honestly for once, and cheat the devil.”

70. He went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured hand. On both previous occasions, he had knocked timidly and with some dread of attracting notice; but now, when he had just discarded the thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. The sound of his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though the house were empty; but these had scarcely died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon. The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes surrounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was by the light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked, perhaps, nobler than it had a right to do; but it was a fine face, honorable rather than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous.

71. “You knock late, sir,” said the old man, in resonant, courteous tones.

72. Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology; at a crisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man of genius hid his head with confusion.

73. “You are cold,” repeated the old man, “and hungry? Well, step in.” And he ordered him into the house with a noble enough gesture.

74. “Some great seigneur,” thought Villon, as his host, setting down the lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the bolts once more into their places.

75. “You will pardon me if I go in front,” he said, when this was done; and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apartment, warmed with a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from the roof. It was very bare of furniture; only some gold plate on a sideboard; some folios; and a stand of armor between the windows. Some smart tapestry hung upon the walls, representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one piece, and in another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.

76. “Will you seat yourself,” said the old man, “and forgive me if I leave you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are to eat I must forage for you myself.”

77. No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the chair on which he had just seated himself, and began examining the room, with the stealth and passion of a cat. He weighed the gold flagons in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated the arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which the seats were lined. He raised the window curtains, and saw that the windows were set with rich stained glass in figures, so far as he could see, of martial import. Then he stood in the middle of the room, drew a long breath, and, retaining it with puffed cheeks, looked round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress every feature of the apartment on his memory.

78. “Seven pieces of plate,” he said. “If there had been ten, I would have risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so help me all the saints!”

79. And just then, hearing the old man’s tread returning along the corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toasting his wet legs before the charcoal pan.

80. His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug of wine in the other. He sat down the plate upon the table, motioning Villon to draw in his chair, and, going to the sideboard, brought back two goblets, which he filled.

81. “I drink your better fortune,” he said, gravely touching Villon’s cup with his own.

82. “To our better acquaintance,” said the poet, growing bold. A mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the old seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them as black rascals as himself. And so he devoted himself to the viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning backward, watched him with steady, curious eyes.

83. “You have blood on your shoulder, my man,” he said.

84. Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he left the house. He cursed Montigny in his heart.

85. “It was none of my shedding,” he stammered.

86. “I had not supposed so,” returned his host, quietly. “A brawl?”

87. “Well, something of that sort,” Villon admitted with a quaver.

88. “Perhaps a fellow murdered?”

89. “Oh, no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more confused. “It was all fair play--murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God strike me dead!” he added, fervently.

90. “One rogue the fewer, I dare say,” observed the master of the house.

91. “You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved. “As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare say you’ve seen dead men in your time, my lord?” he added, glancing at the armor.

92. “Many,” said the old man. “I have followed the wars, as you imagine.”

93. Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up again.

94. “Were any of them bald?” he asked.

95. “Oh, yes, and with hair as white as mine.”

96. “I don’t think I should mind the white so much,” said Villon. “His was red.” And he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to laughter, which he drowned with a great draught of wine. “I’m a little put out when I think of it,” he went on. “I knew him--damn him! And then the cold gives a man fancies--or the fancies give a man cold, I don’t know which.”

97. “Have you any money?” asked the old man.

98. “I have one white,” returned the poet, laughing. “I got it out of a dead jade’s stocking in a porch. She was as dead as Cæsar, poor wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poor rogues like me.”

99. “I,” said the old man, “am Enguerrand de la Feuillee, seigneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?”

100. Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called Francis Villon,” he said, “a poor master of arts in this university. I know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballads, lais, virelais, and roundels and I am very fond of wine. I was born in a garret and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night forward I am your lordship’s very obsequious servant to command.”

101. “No servant of mine,” said the knight; “my guest for this evening, and no more.”

102. “A very grateful guest,” said Villon, politely, and he drank in dumb show to his entertainer.

103. “You are shrewd,” began the old man, tapping his forehead, “very shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a kind of theft?”

104. “It is a kind of theft much practiced in the wars, my lord.”

105. “The wars are the field of honor,” returned the old man, proudly. “There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name of his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their lordships the holy saints and angels.”

106. “Put it,” said Villon, “that I were really a thief, should I not play my life also, and against heavier odds?”

107. “For gain, but not for honor.”

108. “Gain?” repeated Villon, with a shrug. “Gain! The poor fellow wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much about? If they are not gain to those who take them, they are loss enough to the others. The men-at-arms drink by a good fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and wood. I have seen a good many plowmen swinging on trees about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very poor figure they made; and when I asked some one how all these came to be hanged, I was told it was because they could not scrape together enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms.”

109. “These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must endure with constancy. It is true that some captains drive overhard; there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and indeed many follow arms who are no better than brigands.”

110. “You see,” said the poet, “you cannot separate the soldier from the brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspect manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much as disturbing people’s sleep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging’s too good for me--with all my heart; but just ask the farmer which of us he prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to curse on cold nights.”

111. “Look at us two,” said his lordship. “I am old, strong, and honored. If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God’s summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between these two?”

112. “As far as to the moon,” Villon acquiesced. “But if I had been born Lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the difference have been any the less? Should I not have been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier and you the thief?”

113. “A thief?” cried the old man. “I a thief! If you understood your words you would repent them.”

114. Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence. “If your lordship had done me the honor to follow my argument!” he said.

115. “I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence,” said the knight. “Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and honorable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a sharper fashion.” And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. He was now replete and warm, and he was in nowise frightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible between two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in a very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a safe departure on the morrow.

116. “Tell me one thing,” said the old man, pausing in his walk. “Are you really a thief?”

117. “I claim the sacred rights of hospitality,” returned the poet. “My lord, I am.”

118. “You are very young,” the knight continued.

119. “I should never have been so old,” replied Villon, showing his fingers, “if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They have been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers.”

120. “You may still repent and change.”

121. “I repent daily,” said the poet. “There are few people more given to repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody change my circumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were only that he may continue to repent.”

122. “The change must begin in the heart,” returned the old man solemnly.

123. “My dear lord,” answered Villon, “do you really fancy that I steal for pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is not a solitary animal--_Cui Deus fœminam tradit_. Make me king’s pantler--make me abbot of St. Denis; make me bailly of the Patatrac; and then I shall be changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the poor scholar Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I remain the same.”

124. “The grace of God is all-powerful.”

125. “I should be a heretic to question it,” said Francis. “It has made you lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God’s grace, you have a very superior vintage.”

126. The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into the street.

127. “There is something more than I can understand in this,” he said at length. “Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God’s truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honor, like darkness at morning. Listen to me once more. I learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God, and the king, and his lady; and though I have seen many strange things done, I have still striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is not only written in all noble histories, but in every man’s heart, if he will take care to read. You speak of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants; you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men, of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not very wise--and yet I am--but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. You are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doctoring toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as honor and love and faith are not only nobler than food and drink, but indeed I think we desire them more, and suffer more sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I think you will most easily understand me. Are you not while careful to fill your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually wretched?”

128. Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. “You think I have no sense of honor!” he cried. “I’m poor enough, God knows! It’s hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing in your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Any way, I’m a thief--make the most of that--but I’m not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I’ve an honor of my own, as good as yours, though I don’t prate about it all day long, as if it was a God’s miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it’s wanted. Why, now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone in the house? Look at your gold plate! You’re strong, if you like, but you’re old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I want but a jerk of the elbow and here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the streets, with an armful of golden cups! Did you suppose I hadn’t wit enough to see that? And I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets as safe as in a church, there are you with your heart ticking as good as new, and here am I, ready to go out again as poor as I came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And you think I have no sense of honor--God strike me dead!”

129. The old man stretched out his right arm. “I will tell you what you are,” he said. “You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh! believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drunk at my table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before, or after?”

130. “Which you please,” returned the poet, rising. “I believe you to be strictly honorable.” He thoughtfully emptied his cup. “I wish I could add you were intelligent,” he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles. “Age! age! the brains stiff and rheumatic.”

131. The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.

132. “God pity you!” said the lord of Brisetout at the door.

133. “Good-bye, papa,” returned Villon, with a yawn. “Many thanks for the cold mutton.”

134. The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.

135. “A very dull old gentleman,” he thought. “I wonder what his goblets may be worth.”

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. Briefly write out the plot of the story.

2. Which incidents are essential to the story (plot incidents)?

3. Which incidents could be altered without vitally changing the story (developing incidents)? For a discussion of these types of incidents see the present author’s _Writing the Short-Story_, pp. 174-181.

4. Show how one such change could be made.

5. Does the external (visible or bodily) action stand out as clearly as the internal (invisible or soul) action?

6. (a) Is the story probable? (b) Usual? (c) Convincing?--That is, does it seem real?

7. What are its strongest points, to you?

8. Criticise its weak points, if any.

9. Can you suggest any improvements?

10. (a) Do you know any stories similar in theme? (b) If so, which is the better story, to you, and why?

11. Briefly write out the plots of three stories of action or adventure, taken from any book or magazine.

12. Compare one of them with one of these two stories.

TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE

“After He was Dead,” Melville Davisson Post. _Atlantic Monthly_, April, 1911.

“The Attack on the Mill,” Émile Zola. Translated in _Great Short Stories_.

“The Taking of the Redoubt,” Prosper Mérimée. Translated in _Short-Story Masterpieces_.

“The Man Who Would be King,” Rudyard Kipling. In _The Phantom Rickshaw_ (and other stories).

“The Sire de Malétroit’s Door,” Robert Louis Stevenson. In _New Arabian Nights_.

“The Diamond Lens,” Fitz-James O’Brien. In _Short Story Classics, American_.

“The Young Man in a Hurry,” Robert W. Chambers. _Harper’s Magazine_, Aug., 1903.

“A Fight for the Tsarina,” Maurus Jókai. Translated in _Masterpieces of Fiction_.

“The Window that Monsieur Forgot,” Mary Imlay Taylor. _The Booklovers Magazine_, Jan., 1904.

“Blood o’ Innocence,” George W. Knapp. _Lippincott’s Magazine_, Nov., 1907.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--Corporals were formerly the chief officers of the Corsican communes after they had rebelled against their feudal lords. To-day they still occasionally give the name to a man who--because of his property, his relationships, and his business--commands a certain influence, and a sort of effective magistracy over a parish or a canton. The Corsicans divide themselves, after ancient custom, into five castes: gentlemen (of whom some, _magnifiques_, are of higher estate, and some of lower, _signori_), corporals, citizens, plebeians, and foreigners.

[14] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--This word is synonymous with outlaw.

[15] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--_Voltigeurs_, that is, a body raised by the government of late years which acts in conjunction with the police to maintain order.

[16] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--The uniform of the _voltigeurs_ was at that period brown, with a yellow collar.

[17] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--A leather belt which served the joint purpose of a cartridge box and pocket for dispatches and orders.

[18] AUTHOR’S NOTE.--_Buon giorno, fratello_--the ordinary salutation of the Corsicans.

II
STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY

_The Purloined Letter._--EDGAR ALLAN POE
_The Monkey’s Paw._--W. W. JACOBS

The fact is ... that, in the riddle story, the detective was an
after-thought, or, more accurately, a _deus ex machina_ to make
the story go. The riddle had to be unriddled; and who could do
it so naturally and readily as a detective? The detective, as
Poe saw him, was a means to this end; and it was only afterwards
that writers perceived his availability as a character. Lecoq
accordingly becomes a figure in fiction, and Sherlock, while he was
as yet a novelty, was nearly as attractive as the complications in
which he involved himself.--JULIAN HAWTHORNE, Introduction to _The
Lock and Key Library_.

The literature of ghosts is very ancient. In visions of the night,
and in the lurid vapors of mystic incantations, figures rise and
smile, or frown and disappear. The Witch of Endor murmurs her
spell, and “an old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.”
Macbeth takes a bond of fate, and from Hecate’s caldron, after
the apparition of an armed head and that of a bloody child, “an
apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises.” The
wizard recounts to Lochiel his warning vision, and Lochiel departs
to his doom. There are stories of the Castle of Otranto and of The
Three Spaniards, and the infinite detail of “singular experiences,”
which make our conscious daily life the frontier and border-land of
an impinging world of mystery.--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, Introduction
to _Modern Ghosts_.

STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY

Even more deeply seated and elemental than our love for the mysterious is our passion for undertaking its solution. It is this, doubtless, that challenges us to match our wits with the clever rogues of fiction, and to pit our resources of detection against the forces seen and unseen which play in tales of the weird, the mysterious, and the unexplained.

Such stories readily fall into two classes, with as many sub-sorts as the invention of man may compass--those which are soluble and those which are not. Of the former, the detective story is the more common, followed at no very great distance by the tale which seems to involve the supernatural, but whose mystery transpires quite plainly in the end. Of the latter are all those inexplicable wonder-fictions dealing with shapes that haunt the dream-dusk, the whole shadow-land of wraiths and spirits and presences and immaterialities which cross the borders of experience at the call of fantasy. They are all the inheritance of the credulous age in which romance was born, and few of us are so engirded with the armor of stoicism that we cannot enjoy their gathering goose-flesh and creeping spinal chill. Hawthorne and Poe and Irving were masters here.

The processes of inductive reasoning by which Voltaire’s Zadig reconstructed actual occurrences from trivial clues have developed into modern detective stories of uncounted variety, in which the criminal is hunted down by a professional sleuth. Then, too, the “clever amateur” often takes a hand in the game, and even accident plays at times, until there is no end to the possible combinations growing out of pure reasoning employed to unravel the tangle.

Much the same processes are employed to discover the pseudo-supernatural mystery, like Fitz-James O’Brien’s solved ghost-story, “What Was It? A Mystery.” But when we enter the domain of the unexplained, the story tends to become a study of fear and of pure mystery, like Marion Crawford’s “The Upper Berth,” and “The Damned Thing,” by Ambrose Bierce.

Poe was the great American originator of the detective story, and to-day his “Purloined Letter,” reproduced here in full, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” are unsurpassed.

POE AND HIS WRITINGS

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His father, of a good Maryland family, was an actor, and his mother an actress of English extraction. Both parents dying before Edgar was three, he, with his brother William and sister Rosalie, was left homeless in Richmond, where each found a protector. Mrs. Allan adopted Edgar, giving him his middle name, and bestowing at the same time every opportunity that wealth could offer. He was sent to school at Stoke Newington, England, attended a private school in Richmond, and entered the University of Virginia, but remained there less than a year, for his reckless and erratic temperament champed under the restraints of routine. He was placed in Mr. Allan’s counting-room, but ran away to enlist in the United States Army as “Edgar Allan Perry.” After the death of Mrs. Allan, her husband secured Poe’s discharge from the army and his appointment to West Point as a cadet, July 1, 1830; but after six months Poe contrived to be dismissed. He had already published his poems successfully, so he went to New York, in the early part of 1831, to begin his professional literary life. For four years--1833 to 1837--he wrote brilliantly for _The Southern Literary Messenger_, in Baltimore. Then he went successively to New York and Philadelphia, where he worked on various literary enterprises for six years. In 1844 he returned to New York, and became assistant to N. P. Willis, in whose journal, _The Mirror_, “The Raven” appeared in 1845. Poe’s literary reputation was now established both in America and abroad, most of his masterpieces having been created during the turbulent years of his wanderings. In 1835 he had been married to Virginia Clemm, his cousin, and her early death in 1847 broke his spirit. His health had already succumbed to his morbid temperament--which magnified every sorrow of his chaotic career--and to the excesses of drugs and drink. He died most unhappily, October 7, 1849, at the age of forty--a master spirit pitifully wrecked before his prime.

Poe was a remarkable poet, essayist, critic, and short-story writer. “The Raven,” “Lenore,” “Ulalume,” “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” “Israfel,” and “To One in Paradise” are among his best poems. Probably the greatest of his stories are, “MS. Found in A Bottle,” “The Assignation,” “Ligeia,” “The Murders in The Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” “A Descent into The Maelstrom,” “The Masque of The Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Gold Bug,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” first published in _Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine_, September, 1839--and “The Purloined Letter,” first published in _The Gift_, an “annual,” in 1845.

Poe was the greatest conscious artist that American literature has ever known. He not only looked backward upon his own work and, as did Stevenson, clearly traced the operations of his mind in its production, but he built up a structure of literary theory which has been powerfully attacked, indeed, but whose walls remain substantially whole to-day. To his constructive criticism of the short-story is directly due its present advanced form, for while current practice has widely departed from Poe’s morbid, gloomy, extravagant themes and formal, abundant diction, his stories are still unsurpassed for vigor, atmosphere, invention, and thrill, and his laws of composition are read everywhere with the respect due authority.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“Onward!”--but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,
Mute--motionless--aghast!

EDGAR ALLAN POE, _The Assignation_.

Had you lived a generation later, honor, wealth, applause, success
in Europe and at home, would all have been yours.--ANDREW LANG,
_Letters to Dead Authors_.

There are literary evolutionists who, in their whim of seeing in
every original writer a copy of some predecessor, have declared
that Hawthorne is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann....
If the adjective American has any meaning at all, it qualifies
Poe and Hawthorne. They were American to the core. They both
revealed the curious sympathy with Oriental moods of thought
which is often an American characteristic. Poe, with his cold
logic and his mathematical analysis, and Hawthorne, with his
introspective conscience and his love of the subtle and the
invisible, are representative of phases of American character not
to be mistaken by any one who has given thought to the influence
of nationality.... Nothing better of its kind has ever been done
than the “Pit and the Pendulum,” or than the “Fall of the House
of Usher” (which has been compared aptly with Browning’s “Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came” for its power of suggesting
intellectual desolation). Nothing better of its kind has ever been
done than the “Gold Bug,” or than the “Purloined Letter,” or than
the “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”--BRANDER MATTHEWS, _The Philosophy
of the Short-story_.

The conception of gloomy terror which impregnates “The House of
Usher” is as complete as the idea of medieval chivalry underlying
_Ivanhoe_.... To be sure, the terror in his stories, so he said in
his preface to the _Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque_, was
“not of Germany, but of the soul....” Yet one can readily believe
that his Roderick in “The House of Usher,” who pored over books
which had the “character of phantasm,” Morella, who was interested
in the transcendentalism of Schelling and Fichte, Ægæus, whom “the
realities of the world affected--as visions,” are all identical
with the Young Poe when he freed his mind and later his fancy in
the fields where Novalis sought the blue flower and all the German
romanticists wandered.... To say that Poe was a creature of German
influence would be absurd. To say that German thought and fancy
were sympathetic to his genius, would be putting it too mildly.
Between these extremes the truth must lie.--H. S. CANBY, _The Short
Story in English_.

FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON POE

_Prose Writers of America_, Rufus W. Griswold (1870); _Short Studies of American Authors_, Thomas W. Higginson (1880); _Letters to Dead Authors_, Andrew Lang (1886); _Criticisms on Contemporary Thought_, Richard H. Hutton (1894); _American Lands and Letters_, Donald G. Mitchell (1897-99); _Life of Edgar Allan Poe_, R. H. Stoddard (1899); _Poe and Some of His Critics_, C. W. Hubner (1906); _Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary_, George E. Woodberry (1909); _Edgar Allan Poe, A Critical Study_, Arthur Ransome (1910).

THE PURLOINED LETTER

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumina nimio.--_Seneca._
(Nothing is more odious to wisdom than too great acumen.)

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

[Sidenote: FORMAL INTRODUCTION.]

[Sidenote: Dupin appears as the detective in Poe’s other mystery stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”]

[Sidenote: _Au troisième_--third flight, or fourth floor.]

[Sidenote: Compare this story with Sardou’s “A Scrap of Paper.”]

[Sidenote: G---- also appears in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”]

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.

[Sidenote: Careless English.]

2. 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.

3. “If it is any point requiring reflection,” observed Dupin, as he forbore to enkindle the wick, “we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.”

[Sidenote: Later writers of detective stories follow Poe’s lead in showing contempt for police officials.]

4. “That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling everything “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”

5. “Very true,” said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair.

6. “And what is the difficulty now?” I asked. “Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?”

7. “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_.”

8. “Simple and odd,” said Dupin.

[Sidenote: Poe makes G---- to serve as a foil for Dupin, while the narrator plays Watson to Dupin’s Sherlock--but Poe came first!]

9. “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.”

[Sidenote: Forecast of denouement. Note how this point is emphasized.]

10. “Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault,” said my friend.

11. “What nonsense you _do_ talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.

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

13. “Oh, good Heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?”

14. “A little _too_ self-evident.”

[Sidenote: Later imitators freely use this scheme of the superior pose of the police.]

15. “Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!” roared our visitor, profoundly amused. “Oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!”

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

[Sidenote: This device has since been much overworked.]

17. “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.”

[Sidenote: LENGTHY INTRODUCTION ENDS. Note that this is one unified story, with much philosophising, but no minor episodes.]

18. “Proceed,” said I.

19. “Or not,” said Dupin.

[Sidenote: The foundation laid; SUMMARY OF PROBLEM.]

20. “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.”

21. “How is this known?” asked Dupin.

[Sidenote: Development of problem.]

22. “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.”

23. “Be a little more explicit,” I said.

24. “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.

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

[Sidenote: Importance of problem.]

26. “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 ascendency over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized.”

[Sidenote: Philosophy of problem.]

27. “But this ascendency,” I interposed, “would depend upon the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. Who would dare--”

[Sidenote: Unique situation: the thief is known.]

[Sidenote: Method and circumstances of the theft related.]

[Sidenote: See note on ¶115, p. 104.]

[Sidenote: Note “the”.]

28. “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, recognizes 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.”

29. “Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendency complete--the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber.”

[Sidenote: Results of theft.]

[Sidenote: End of statement of case as a problem.]

30. “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.”

[Sidenote: Character development.]

[Sidenote: Satire supports his attitude toward the police.]

31. “Than whom,” said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, “no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined.”

[Sidenote: Character delineation.]

32. “You flatter me,” replied the Prefect; “but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained.”

33. “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.”

[Sidenote: ATTEMPTS AT RECOVERY OF THE PURLOINED LETTER. SECOND STAGE OF THE PLOT.]

34. “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.”

[Sidenote: _Au fait_--to the point; therefore, at home.]

35. “But,” said I, “you are quite _au fait_ in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often before.”

36. “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.”

37. “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?”

[Sidenote: Inferential reasoning.]

38. “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.”

39. “Its susceptibility of being produced?” said I.

[Sidenote: Note the distinction.]

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

[Sidenote: A just inference.]

41. “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.”

42. “Entirely,” said the Prefect. “He has been twice waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own inspection.”

43. “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.”

44. “Not _altogether_ a fool,” said G----; “but then he’s a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool.”

45. “True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, “although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself.”

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

[Sidenote: The thoroughness of the search tends to interest the reader in the problem as a difficult one.]

[Sidenote: On Poe’s “police methods” most modern detective writers have drawn for material.]

47. “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.”

48. “Why so?”

[Sidenote: Doubtless the narrator speaks.]

49. “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 bed-posts are employed in the same way.”

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

[Sidenote: Note improper shifting of tenses in question and answer.]

51. “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.”

52. “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?”

[Sidenote: Note how ingeniously Poe weaves his knowledge of detective methods into the actual search of the story.]

53. “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 gluing--any unusual gaping in the joints--would have sufficed to insure detection.”

54. “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?”

55. “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.”

[Sidenote: This seems to be a break in the chain of probability, as G---- has already carefully explained how he was able to go over D----'s house with impunity.]

56. “The two houses adjoining!” I exclaimed; “you must have had a great deal of trouble.”

57. “We had; but the reward offered is prodigious.”

58. “You include the _grounds_ about the houses?”

59. “All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed.”

60. “You looked among D---- 's papers, of course, and into the books of the library?”

[Sidenote: Note unusual word.]

61. “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.”

62. “You explored the floors beneath the carpets?”