Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

“That it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrot—in
which case he would have been the most illustrious parrot of his
race. He has merely repeated the individual items of the already
published opinion; collecting them, with a laudable industry,
from this paper and from that. ‘The things had all evidently been
there,’ he says, ‘at least, three or four weeks, and there can be
_no doubt_ that the spot of this appalling outrage has been
discovered.’ The facts here re-stated by Le Soleil, are very far
indeed from removing my own doubts upon this subject, and we will
examine them more particularly hereafter in connexion with
another division of the theme.

“At present we must occupy ourselves with other investigations.
You cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the
examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity
was readily determined, or should have been; but there were other
points to be ascertained. Had the body been in any respect
despoiled? Had the deceased any articles of jewelry about her
person upon leaving home? if so, had she any when found? These
are important questions utterly untouched by the evidence; and
there are others of equal moment, which have met with no
attention. We must endeavor to satisfy ourselves by personal
inquiry. The case of St. Eustache must be re-examined. I have no
suspicion of this person; but let us proceed methodically. We
will ascertain beyond a doubt the validity of the affidavits in
regard to his whereabouts on the Sunday. Affidavits of this
character are readily made matter of mystification. Should there
be nothing wrong here, however, we will dismiss St. Eustache from
our investigations. His suicide, however corroborative of
suspicion, were there found to be deceit in the affidavits, is,
without such deceit, in no respect an unaccountable circumstance,
or one which need cause us to deflect from the line of ordinary
analysis.

“In that which I now propose, we will discard the interior points
of this tragedy, and concentrate our attention upon its
outskirts. Not the least usual error, in investigations such as
this, is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total
disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events. It is the
mal-practice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to
the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet experience has shown, and a
true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger
portion of truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is
through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through
its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon
the unforeseen. But perhaps you do not comprehend me. The history
of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to
collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted
for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has
at length become necessary, in any prospective view of
improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances
for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the
range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to
base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is
admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a
matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and
unimagined to the mathematical _formulae_ of the schools.

“I repeat that it is no more than fact, that the larger portion
of all truth has sprung from the collateral; and it is but in
accordance with the spirit of the principle involved in this
fact, that I would divert inquiry, in the present case, from the
trodden and hitherto unfruitful ground of the event itself, to
the contemporary circumstances which surround it. While you
ascertain the validity of the affidavits, I will examine the
newspapers more generally than you have as yet done. So far, we
have only reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be
strange indeed if a comprehensive survey, such as I propose, of
the public prints, will not afford us some minute points which
shall establish a direction for inquiry.”

In pursuance of Dupin’s suggestion, I made scrupulous examination
of the affair of the affidavits. The result was a firm conviction
of their validity, and of the consequent innocence of St.
Eustache. In the mean time my friend occupied himself, with what
seemed to me a minuteness altogether objectless, in a scrutiny of
the various newspaper files. At the end of a week he placed
before me the following extracts:

“About three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to
the present, was caused by the disappearance of this same Marie
Rogêt, from the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc, in the Palais
Royal. At the end of a week, however, she re-appeared at her
customary comptoir, as well as ever, with the exception of a
slight paleness not altogether usual. It was given out by
Monsieur Le Blanc and her mother, that she had merely been on a
visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was speedily
hushed up. We presume that the present absence is a freak of the
same nature, and that, at the expiration of a week, or perhaps of
a month, we shall have her among us again.”—Evening Paper—Monday,
June 23. (*17)

“An evening journal of yesterday, refers to a former mysterious
disappearance of Mademoiselle Rogêt. It is well known that,
during the week of her absence from Le Blanc’s parfumerie, she
was in the company of a young naval officer, much noted for his
debaucheries. A quarrel, it is supposed, providentially led to
her return home. We have the name of the Lothario in question,
who is, at present, stationed in Paris, but, for obvious reasons,
forbear to make it public.”—Le Mercurie—Tuesday Morning, June 24.
(*18)

“An outrage of the most atrocious character was perpetrated near
this city the day before yesterday. A gentleman, with his wife
and daughter, engaged, about dusk, the services of six young men,
who were idly rowing a boat to and fro near the banks of the
Seine, to convey him across the river. Upon reaching the opposite
shore, the three passengers stepped out, and had proceeded so far
as to be beyond the view of the boat, when the daughter
discovered that she had left in it her parasol. She returned for
it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream, gagged,
brutally treated, and finally taken to the shore at a point not
far from that at which she had originally entered the boat with
her parents. The villains have escaped for the time, but the
police are upon their trail, and some of them will soon be
taken.”—Morning Paper—June 25. (*19)

“We have received one or two communications, the object of which
is to fasten the crime of the late atrocity upon Mennais; (*20)
but as this gentleman has been fully exonerated by a loyal
inquiry, and as the arguments of our several correspondents
appear to be more zealous than profound, we do not think it
advisable to make them public.”—Morning Paper—June 28. (*21)

“We have received several forcibly written communications,
apparently from various sources, and which go far to render it a
matter of certainty that the unfortunate Marie Rogêt has become a
victim of one of the numerous bands of blackguards which infest
the vicinity of the city upon Sunday. Our own opinion is
decidedly in favor of this supposition. We shall endeavor to make
room for some of these arguments hereafter.”—Evening
Paper—Tuesday, June 31. (*22)

“On Monday, one of the bargemen connected with the revenue
service, saw a empty boat floating down the Seine. Sails were
lying in the bottom of the boat. The bargeman towed it under the
barge office. The next morning it was taken from thence, without
the knowledge of any of the officers. The rudder is now at the
barge office.”—Le Diligence—Thursday, June 26.

Upon reading these various extracts, they not only seemed to me
irrelevant, but I could perceive no mode in which any one of them
could be brought to bear upon the matter in hand. I waited for
some explanation from Dupin.

“It is not my present design,” he said, “to dwell upon the first
and second of those extracts. I have copied them chiefly to show
you the extreme remissness of the police, who, as far as I can
understand from the Prefect, have not troubled themselves, in any
respect, with an examination of the naval officer alluded to. Yet
it is mere folly to say that between the first and second
disappearance of Marie there is no _supposable_ connection. Let
us admit the first elopement to have resulted in a quarrel
between the lovers, and the return home of the betrayed. We are
now prepared to view a second elopement (if we know that an
elopement has again taken place) as indicating a renewal of the
betrayer’s advances, rather than as the result of new proposals
by a second individual—we are prepared to regard it as a ‘making
up’ of the old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new
one. The chances are ten to one, that he who had once eloped with
Marie, would again propose an elopement, rather than that she to
whom proposals of elopement had been made by one individual,
should have them made to her by another. And here let me call
your attention to the fact, that the time elapsing between the
first ascertained, and the second supposed elopement, is a few
months more than the general period of the cruises of our
men-of-war. Had the lover been interrupted in his first villany
by the necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first
moment of his return to renew the base designs not yet altogether
accomplished—or not yet altogether accomplished by _him?_ Of all
these things we know nothing.

“You will say, however, that, in the second instance, there was
no elopement as imagined. Certainly not—but are we prepared to
say that there was not the frustrated design? Beyond St.
Eustache, and perhaps Beauvais, we find no recognized, no open,
no honorable suitors of Marie. Of none other is there any thing
said. Who, then, is the secret lover, of whom the relatives (at
least most of them) know nothing, but whom Marie meets upon the
morning of Sunday, and who is so deeply in her confidence, that
she hesitates not to remain with him until the shades of the
evening descend, amid the solitary groves of the Barrière du
Roule? Who is that secret lover, I ask, of whom, at least, most
of the relatives know nothing? And what means the singular
prophecy of Madame Rogêt on the morning of Marie’s departure?—‘I
fear that I shall never see Marie again.’

“But if we cannot imagine Madame Rogêt privy to the design of
elopement, may we not at least suppose this design entertained by
the girl? Upon quitting home, she gave it to be understood that
she was about to visit her aunt in the Rue des Drômes and St.
Eustache was requested to call for her at dark. Now, at first
glance, this fact strongly militates against my suggestion;—but
let us reflect. That she did meet some companion, and proceed
with him across the river, reaching the Barrière du Roule at so
late an hour as three o’clock in the afternoon, is known. But in
consenting so to accompany this individual, (_for whatever
purpose—to her mother known or unknown,_) she must have thought
of her expressed intention when leaving home, and of the surprise
and suspicion aroused in the bosom of her affianced suitor, St.
Eustache, when, calling for her, at the hour appointed, in the
Rue des Drômes, he should find that she had not been there, and
when, moreover, upon returning to the pension with this alarming
intelligence, he should become aware of her continued absence
from home. She must have thought of these things, I say. She must
have foreseen the chagrin of St. Eustache, the suspicion of all.
She could not have thought of returning to brave this suspicion;
but the suspicion becomes a point of trivial importance to her,
if we suppose her not intending to return.

“We may imagine her thinking thus—‘I am to meet a certain person
for the purpose of elopement, or for certain other purposes known
only to myself. It is necessary that there be no chance of
interruption—there must be sufficient time given us to elude
pursuit—I will give it to be understood that I shall visit and
spend the day with my aunt at the Rue des Drômes—I well tell St.
Eustache not to call for me until dark—in this way, my absence
from home for the longest possible period, without causing
suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and I shall gain
more time than in any other manner. If I bid St. Eustache call
for me at dark, he will be sure not to call before; but, if I
wholly neglect to bid him call, my time for escape will be
diminished, since it will be expected that I return the earlier,
and my absence will the sooner excite anxiety. Now, if it were my
design to return at all—if I had in contemplation merely a stroll
with the individual in question—it would not be my policy to bid
St. Eustache call; for, calling, he will be sure to ascertain
that I have played him false—a fact of which I might keep him for
ever in ignorance, by leaving home without notifying him of my
intention, by returning before dark, and by then stating that I
had been to visit my aunt in the Rue des Drômes. But, as it is my
design never to return—or not for some weeks—or not until certain
concealments are effected—the gaining of time is the only point
about which I need give myself any concern.’

“You have observed, in your notes, that the most general opinion
in relation to this sad affair is, and was from the first, that
the girl had been the victim of a gang of blackguards. Now, the
popular opinion, under certain conditions, is not to be
disregarded. When arising of itself—when manifesting itself in a
strictly spontaneous manner—we should look upon it as analogous
with that _intuition_ which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual
man of genius. In ninety-nine cases from the hundred I would
abide by its decision. But it is important that we find no
palpable traces of _suggestion_. The opinion must be rigorously
_the public’s own_; and the distinction is often exceedingly
difficult to perceive and to maintain. In the present instance,
it appears to me that this ‘public opinion’ in respect to a gang,
has been superinduced by the collateral event which is detailed
in the third of my extracts. All Paris is excited by the
discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young, beautiful and
notorious. This corpse is found, bearing marks of violence, and
floating in the river. But it is now made known that, at the very
period, or about the very period, in which it is supposed that
the girl was assassinated, an outrage similar in nature to that
endured by the deceased, although less in extent, was
perpetuated, by a gang of young ruffians, upon the person of a
second young female. Is it wonderful that the one known atrocity
should influence the popular judgment in regard to the other
unknown? This judgment awaited direction, and the known outrage
seemed so opportunely to afford it! Marie, too, was found in the
river; and upon this very river was this known outrage committed.
The connexion of the two events had about it so much of the
palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure of the
populace to appreciate and to seize it. But, in fact, the one
atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing, evidence
that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so
committed. It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang
of ruffians were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most
unheard-of wrong, there should have been another similar gang, in
a similar locality, in the same city, under the same
circumstances, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a
wrong of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the same period
of time! Yet in what, if not in this marvellous train of
coincidence, does the accidentally suggested opinion of the
populace call upon us to believe?

“Before proceeding farther, let us consider the supposed scene of
the assassination, in the thicket at the Barrière du Roule. This
thicket, although dense, was in the close vicinity of a public
road. Within were three or four large stones, forming a kind of
seat with a back and footstool. On the upper stone was discovered
a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf. A parasol,
gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief, were also here found. The
handkerchief bore the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’ Fragments of dress
were seen on the branches around. The earth was trampled, the
bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a violent
struggle.

“Notwithstanding the acclamation with which the discovery of this
thicket was received by the press, and the unanimity with which
it was supposed to indicate the precise scene of the outrage, it
must be admitted that there was some very good reason for doubt.
That it was the scene, I may or I may not believe—but there was
excellent reason for doubt. Had the true scene been, as Le
Commerciel suggested, in the neighborhood of the Rue Pavée St.
Andrée, the perpetrators of the crime, supposing them still
resident in Paris, would naturally have been stricken with terror
at the public attention thus acutely directed into the proper
channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have
arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to
redivert this attention. And thus, the thicket of the Barrière du
Roule having been already suspected, the idea of placing the
articles where they were found, might have been naturally
entertained. There is no real evidence, although Le Soleil so
supposes, that the articles discovered had been more than a very
few days in the thicket; while there is much circumstantial proof
that they could not have remained there, without attracting
attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal
Sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys.
‘They were all _mildewed_ down hard,’ says Le Soleil, adopting
the opinions of its predecessors, ‘with the action of the rain,
and stuck together from _mildew_. The grass had grown around and
over some of them. The silk of the parasol was strong, but the
threads of it were run together within. The upper part, where it
had been doubled and folded, was all _mildewed_ and rotten, and
tore on being opened.’ In respect to the grass having ‘grown
around and over some of them,’ it is obvious that the fact could
only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the
recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the
articles and took them home before they had been seen by a third
party. But grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather,
(such as was that of the period of the murder,) as much as two or
three inches in a single day. A parasol lying upon a newly turfed
ground, might, in a single week, be entirely concealed from sight
by the upspringing grass. And touching that mildew upon which the
editor of Le Soleil so pertinaciously insists, that he employs
the word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just
quoted, is he really unaware of the nature of this mildew? Is he
to be told that it is one of the many classes of fungus, of which
the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence within
twenty-four hours?

“Thus we see, at a glance, that what has been most triumphantly
adduced in support of the idea that the articles had been ‘for at
least three or four weeks’ in the thicket, is most absurdly null
as regards any evidence of that fact. On the other hand, it is
exceedingly difficult to believe that these articles could have
remained in the thicket specified, for a longer period than a
single week—for a longer period than from one Sunday to the next.
Those who know any thing of the vicinity of Paris, know the
extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great
distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an unexplored, or even
an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not
for a moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at heart a
lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat of
this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even during the
weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of
natural loveliness which immediately surround us. At every second
step, he will find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and
personal intrusion of some ruffian or party of carousing
blackguards. He will seek privacy amid the densest foliage, all
in vain. Here are the very nooks where the unwashed most
abound—here are the temples most desecrate. With sickness of the
heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted Paris as to a
less odious because less incongruous sink of pollution. But if
the vicinity of the city is so beset during the working days of
the week, how much more so on the Sabbath! It is now especially
that, released from the claims of labor, or deprived of the
customary opportunities of crime, the town blackguard seeks the
precincts of the town, not through love of the rural, which in
his heart he despises, but by way of escape from the restraints
and conventionalities of society. He desires less the fresh air
and the green trees, than the utter license of the country. Here,
at the road-side inn, or beneath the foliage of the woods, he
indulges, unchecked by any eye except those of his boon
companions, in all the mad excess of a counterfeit hilarity—the
joint offspring of liberty and of rum. I say nothing more than
what must be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when I
repeat that the circumstance of the articles in question having
remained undiscovered, for a longer period than from one Sunday
to another, in any thicket in the immediate neighborhood of
Paris, is to be looked upon as little less than miraculous.

“But there are not wanting other grounds for the suspicion that
the articles were placed in the thicket with the view of
diverting attention from the real scene of the outrage. And,
first, let me direct your notice to the date of the discovery of
the articles. Collate this with the date of the fifth extract
made by myself from the newspapers. You will find that the
discovery followed, almost immediately, the urgent communications
sent to the evening paper. These communications, although various
and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same
point—viz., the directing of attention to a gang as the
perpetrators of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the
Barrière du Roule as its scene. Now here, of course, the
suspicion is not that, in consequence of these communications, or
of the public attention by them directed, the articles were found
by the boys; but the suspicion might and may well have been, that
the articles were not before found by the boys, for the reason
that the articles had not before been in the thicket; having been
deposited there only at so late a period as at the date, or
shortly prior to the date of the communication, by the guilty
authors of these communications themselves.

“This thicket was a singular—an exceedingly singular one. It was
unusually dense. Within its naturally walled enclosure were three
extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool.
And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate
vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc,
whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies
about them in search of the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a
rash wager—a wager of one thousand to one—that a day never passed
over the heads of these boys without finding at least one of them
ensconced in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned upon its natural
throne? Those who would hesitate at such a wager, have either
never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the boyish nature.
I repeat—it is exceedingly hard to comprehend how the articles
could have remained in this thicket undiscovered, for a longer
period than one or two days; and that thus there is good ground
for suspicion, in spite of the dogmatic ignorance of Le Soleil,
that they were, at a comparatively late date, deposited where
found.

“But there are still other and stronger reasons for believing
them so deposited, than any which I have as yet urged. And, now,
let me beg your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of
the articles. On the _upper_ stone lay a white petticoat; on the
_second_, a silk scarf; scattered around, were a parasol, gloves,
and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’ Here
is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not
over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles naturally. But
it is by no means a really natural arrangement. I should rather
have looked to see the things all lying on the ground and
trampled under foot. In the narrow limits of that bower, it would
have been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should
have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected to the
brushing to and fro of many struggling persons. ‘There was
evidence,’ it is said, ‘of a struggle; and the earth was
trampled, the bushes were broken,’—but the petticoat and the
scarf are found deposited as if upon shelves. ‘The pieces of the
frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide and six
inches long. One part was the hem of the frock and it had been
mended. They looked like strips torn off.’ Here, inadvertently,
Le Soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase. The
pieces, as described, do indeed ‘look like strips torn off;’ but
purposely and by hand. It is one of the rarest of accidents that
a piece is ‘torn off,’ from any garment such as is now in
question, by the agency of a thorn. From the very nature of such
fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming entangled in them, tears them
rectangularly—divides them into two longitudinal rents, at right
angles with each other, and meeting at an apex where the thorn
enters—but it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece ‘torn
off.’ I never so knew it, nor did you. To tear a piece off from
such fabric, two distinct forces, in different directions, will
be, in almost every case, required. If there be two edges to the
fabric—if, for example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is
desired to tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will the one
force serve the purpose. But in the present case the question is
of a dress, presenting but one edge. To tear a piece from the
interior, where no edge is presented, could only be effected by a
miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one thorn could
accomplish it. But, even where an edge is presented, two thorns
will be necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions,
and the other in one. And this in the supposition that the edge
is unhemmed. If hemmed, the matter is nearly out of the question.
We thus see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces
being ‘torn off’ through the simple agency of ‘thorns;’ yet we
are required to believe not only that one piece but that many
have been so torn. ‘And one part,’ too, ‘was the hem of the
frock!’ Another piece was ‘part of the skirt, not the hem,’—that
is to say, was torn completely out through the agency of thorns,
from the uncaged interior of the dress! These, I say, are things
which one may well be pardoned for disbelieving; yet, taken
collectedly, they form, perhaps, less of reasonable ground for
suspicion, than the one startling circumstance of the articles’
having been left in this thicket at all, by any murderers who had
enough precaution to think of removing the corpse. You will not
have apprehended me rightly, however, if you suppose it my design
to deny this thicket as the scene of the outrage. There might
have been a wrong here, or, more possibly, an accident at Madame
Deluc’s. But, in fact, this is a point of minor importance. We
are not engaged in an attempt to discover the scene, but to
produce the perpetrators of the murder. What I have adduced,
notwithstanding the minuteness with which I have adduced it, has
been with the view, first, to show the folly of the positive and
headlong assertions of Le Soleil, but secondly and chiefly, to
bring you, by the most natural route, to a further contemplation
of the doubt whether this assassination has, or has not, been the
work of a gang.

“We will resume this question by mere allusion to the revolting
details of the surgeon examined at the inquest. It is only
necessary to say that his published inferences, in regard to the
number of ruffians, have been properly ridiculed as unjust and
totally baseless, by all the reputable anatomists of Paris. Not
that the matter might not have been as inferred, but that there
was no ground for the inference:—was there not much for another?

“Let us reflect now upon ‘the traces of a struggle;’ and let me
ask what these traces have been supposed to demonstrate. A gang.
But do they not rather demonstrate the absence of a gang? What
struggle could have taken place—what struggle so violent and so
enduring as to have left its ‘traces’ in all directions—between a
weak and defenceless girl and the gang of ruffians imagined? The
silent grasp of a few rough arms and all would have been over.
The victim must have been absolutely passive at their will. You
will here bear in mind that the arguments urged against the
thicket as the scene, are applicable in chief part, only against
it as the scene of an outrage committed by more than a single
individual. If we imagine but one violator, we can conceive, and
thus only conceive, the struggle of so violent and so obstinate a
nature as to have left the ‘traces’ apparent.

“And again. I have already mentioned the suspicion to be excited
by the fact that the articles in question were suffered to remain
at all in the thicket where discovered. It seems almost
impossible that these evidences of guilt should have been
accidentally left where found. There was sufficient presence of
mind (it is supposed) to remove the corpse; and yet a more
positive evidence than the corpse itself (whose features might
have been quickly obliterated by decay,) is allowed to lie
conspicuously in the scene of the outrage—I allude to the
handkerchief with the name of the deceased. If this was accident,
it was not the accident of a gang. We can imagine it only the
accident of an individual. Let us see. An individual has
committed the murder. He is alone with the ghost of the departed.
He is appalled by what lies motionless before him. The fury of
his passion is over, and there is abundant room in his heart for
the natural awe of the deed. His is none of that confidence which
the presence of numbers inevitably inspires. He is alone with the
dead. He trembles and is bewildered. Yet there is a necessity for
disposing of the corpse. He bears it to the river, but leaves
behind him the other evidences of guilt; for it is difficult, if
not impossible to carry all the burthen at once, and it will be
easy to return for what is left. But in his toilsome journey to
the water his fears redouble within him. The sounds of life
encompass his path. A dozen times he hears or fancies the step of
an observer. Even the very lights from the city bewilder him.
Yet, in time and by long and frequent pauses of deep agony, he
reaches the river’s brink, and disposes of his ghastly
charge—perhaps through the medium of a boat. But now what
treasure does the world hold—what threat of vengeance could it
hold out—which would have power to urge the return of that lonely
murderer over that toilsome and perilous path, to the thicket and
its blood chilling recollections? He returns not, let the
consequences be what they may. He could not return if he would.
His sole thought is immediate escape. He turns his back forever
upon those dreadful shrubberies and flees as from the wrath to
come.

“But how with a gang? Their number would have inspired them with
confidence; if, indeed confidence is ever wanting in the breast
of the arrant blackguard; and of arrant blackguards alone are the
supposed gangs ever constituted. Their number, I say, would have
prevented the bewildering and unreasoning terror which I have
imagined to paralyze the single man. Could we suppose an
oversight in one, or two, or three, this oversight would have
been remedied by a fourth. They would have left nothing behind
them; for their number would have enabled them to carry all at
once. There would have been no need of return.

“Consider now the circumstance that in the outer garment of the
corpse when found, ‘a slip, about a foot wide had been torn
upward from the bottom hem to the waist wound three times round
the waist, and secured by a sort of hitch in the back.’ This was
done with the obvious design of affording a handle by which to
carry the body. But would any number of men have dreamed of
resorting to such an expedient? To three or four, the limbs of
the corpse would have afforded not only a sufficient, but the
best possible hold. The device is that of a single individual;
and this brings us to the fact that ‘between the thicket and the
river, the rails of the fences were found taken down, and the
ground bore evident traces of some heavy burden having been
dragged along it!’ But would a number of men have put themselves
to the superfluous trouble of taking down a fence, for the
purpose of dragging through it a corpse which they might have
lifted over any fence in an instant? Would a number of men have
so dragged a corpse at all as to have left evident traces of the
dragging?

“And here we must refer to an observation of Le Commerciel; an
observation upon which I have already, in some measure,
commented. ‘A piece,’ says this journal, ‘of one of the
unfortunate girl’s petticoats was torn out and tied under her
chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent
screams. This was done by fellows who had no
pocket-handkerchiefs.’

“I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never
without a pocket-handkerchief. But it is not to this fact that I
now especially advert. That it was not through want of a
handkerchief for the purpose imagined by Le Commerciel, that this
bandage was employed, is rendered apparent by the handkerchief
left in the thicket; and that the object was not ‘to prevent
screams’ appears, also, from the bandage having been employed in
preference to what would so much better have answered the
purpose. But the language of the evidence speaks of the strip in
question as ‘found around the neck, fitting loosely, and secured
with a hard knot.’ These words are sufficiently vague, but differ
materially from those of Le Commerciel. The slip was eighteen
inches wide, and therefore, although of muslin, would form a
strong band when folded or rumpled longitudinally. And thus
rumpled it was discovered. My inference is this. The solitary
murderer, having borne the corpse, for some distance (whether
from the thicket or elsewhere) by means of the bandage hitched
around its middle, found the weight, in this mode of procedure,
too much for his strength. He resolved to drag the burthen—the
evidence goes to show that it was dragged. With this object in
view, it became necessary to attach something like a rope to one
of the extremities. It could be best attached about the neck,
where the head would prevent its slipping off. And, now, the
murderer bethought him, unquestionably, of the bandage about the
loins. He would have used this, but for its volution about the
corpse, the hitch which embarrassed it, and the reflection that
it had not been ‘torn off’ from the garment. It was easier to
tear a new slip from the petticoat. He tore it, made it fast
about the neck, and so dragged his victim to the brink of the
river. That this ‘bandage,’ only attainable with trouble and
delay, and but imperfectly answering its purpose—that this
bandage was employed at all, demonstrates that the necessity for
its employment sprang from circumstances arising at a period when
the handkerchief was no longer attainable—that is to say,
arising, as we have imagined, after quitting the thicket, (if the
thicket it was), and on the road between the thicket and the
river.

“But the evidence, you will say, of Madame Deluc (!) points
especially to the presence of a gang, in the vicinity of the
thicket, at or about the epoch of the murder. This I grant. I
doubt if there were not a dozen gangs, such as described by
Madame Deluc, in and about the vicinity of the Barrière du Roule
at or about the period of this tragedy. But the gang which has
drawn upon itself the pointed animadversion, although the
somewhat tardy and very suspicious evidence of Madame Deluc, is
the only gang which is represented by that honest and scrupulous
old lady as having eaten her cakes and swallowed her brandy,
without putting themselves to the trouble of making her payment.
Et hinc illæ iræ?

“But what is the precise evidence of Madame Deluc? ‘A gang of
miscreants made their appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and
drank without making payment, followed in the route of the young
man and girl, returned to the inn about dusk, and recrossed the
river as if in great haste.’

“Now this ‘great haste’ very possibly seemed greater haste in the
eyes of Madame Deluc, since she dwelt lingeringly and lamentingly
upon her violated cakes and ale—cakes and ale for which she might
still have entertained a faint hope of compensation. Why,
otherwise, since it was about dusk, should she make a point of
the haste? It is no cause for wonder, surely, that even a gang of
blackguards should make haste to get home, when a wide river is
to be crossed in small boats, when storm impends, and when night
approaches.

“I say approaches; for the night had not yet arrived. It was only
about dusk that the indecent haste of these ‘miscreants’ offended
the sober eyes of Madame Deluc. But we are told that it was upon
this very evening that Madame Deluc, as well as her eldest son,
‘heard the screams of a female in the vicinity of the inn.’ And
in what words does Madame Deluc designate the period of the
evening at which these screams were heard? ‘It was soon after
dark,’ she says. But ‘soon after dark,’ is, at least, dark; and
‘about dusk’ is as certainly daylight. Thus it is abundantly
clear that the gang quitted the Barrière du Roule prior to the
screams overheard (?) by Madame Deluc. And although, in all the
many reports of the evidence, the relative expressions in
question are distinctly and invariably employed just as I have
employed them in this conversation with yourself, no notice
whatever of the gross discrepancy has, as yet, been taken by any
of the public journals, or by any of the myrmidons of police.

“I shall add but one to the arguments against a gang; but this
one has, to my own understanding at least, a weight altogether
irresistible. Under the circumstances of large reward offered,
and full pardon to any king’s evidence, it is not to be imagined,
for a moment, that some member of a gang of low ruffians, or of
any body of men, would not long ago have betrayed his
accomplices. Each one of a gang so placed, is not so much greedy
of reward, or anxious for escape, as fearful of betrayal. He
betrays eagerly and early that he may not himself be betrayed.
That the secret has not been divulged, is the very best of proof
that it is, in fact, a secret. The horrors of this dark deed are
known only to one, or two, living human beings, and to God.

“Let us sum up now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long
analysis. We have attained the idea either of a fatal accident
under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in
the thicket at the Barrière du Roule, by a lover, or at least by
an intimate and secret associate of the deceased. This associate
is of swarthy complexion. This complexion, the ‘hitch’ in the
bandage, and the ‘sailor’s knot,’ with which the bonnet-ribbon is
tied, point to a seaman. His companionship with the deceased, a
gay, but not an abject young girl, designates him as above the
grade of the common sailor. Here the well written and urgent
communications to the journals are much in the way of
corroboration. The circumstance of the first elopement, as
mentioned by Le Mercurie, tends to blend the idea of this seaman
with that of the ‘naval officer’ who is first known to have led
the unfortunate into crime.

“And here, most fitly, comes the consideration of the continued
absence of him of the dark complexion. Let me pause to observe
that the complexion of this man is dark and swarthy; it was no
common swarthiness which constituted the sole point of
remembrance, both as regards Valence and Madame Deluc. But why is
this man absent? Was he murdered by the gang? If so, why are
there only traces of the assassinated girl? The scene of the two
outrages will naturally be supposed identical. And where is his
corpse? The assassins would most probably have disposed of both
in the same way. But it may be said that this man lives, and is
deterred from making himself known, through dread of being
charged with the murder. This consideration might be supposed to
operate upon him now—at this late period—since it has been given
in evidence that he was seen with Marie—but it would have had no
force at the period of the deed. The first impulse of an innocent
man would have been to announce the outrage, and to aid in
identifying the ruffians. This policy would have suggested. He
had been seen with the girl. He had crossed the river with her in
an open ferry-boat. The denouncing of the assassins would have
appeared, even to an idiot, the surest and sole means of
relieving himself from suspicion. We cannot suppose him, on the
night of the fatal Sunday, both innocent himself and incognizant
of an outrage committed. Yet only under such circumstances is it
possible to imagine that he would have failed, if alive, in the
denouncement of the assassins.

“And what means are ours, of attaining the truth? We shall find
these means multiplying and gathering distinctness as we proceed.
Let us sift to the bottom this affair of the first elopement. Let
us know the full history of ‘the officer,’ with his present
circumstances, and his whereabouts at the precise period of the
murder. Let us carefully compare with each other the various
communications sent to the evening paper, in which the object was
to inculpate a gang. This done, let us compare these
communications, both as regards style and MS., with those sent to
the morning paper, at a previous period, and insisting so
vehemently upon the guilt of Mennais. And, all this done, let us
again compare these various communications with the known MSS. of
the officer. Let us endeavor to ascertain, by repeated
questionings of Madame Deluc and her boys, as well as of the
omnibus driver, Valence, something more of the personal
appearance and bearing of the ‘man of dark complexion.’ Queries,
skilfully directed, will not fail to elicit, from some of these
parties, information on this particular point (or upon
others)—information which the parties themselves may not even be
aware of possessing. And let us now trace the boat picked up by
the bargeman on the morning of Monday the twenty-third of June,
and which was removed from the barge-office, without the
cognizance of the officer in attendance, and without the rudder,
at some period prior to the discovery of the corpse. With a
proper caution and perseverance we shall infallibly trace this
boat; for not only can the bargeman who picked it up identify it,
but the rudder is at hand. The rudder of a sail-boat would not
have been abandoned, without inquiry, by one altogether at ease
in heart. And here let me pause to insinuate a question. There
was no advertisement of the picking up of this boat. It was
silently taken to the barge-office, and as silently removed. But
its owner or employer—how happened he, at so early a period as
Tuesday morning, to be informed, without the agency of
advertisement, of the locality of the boat taken up on Monday,
unless we imagine some connexion with the navy—some personal
permanent connexion leading to cognizance of its minute in
interests—its petty local news?

“In speaking of the lonely assassin dragging his burden to the
shore, I have already suggested the probability of his availing
himself of a boat. Now we are to understand that Marie Rogêt was
precipitated from a boat. This would naturally have been the
case. The corpse could not have been trusted to the shallow
waters of the shore. The peculiar marks on the back and shoulders
of the victim tell of the bottom ribs of a boat. That the body
was found without weight is also corroborative of the idea. If
thrown from the shore a weight would have been attached. We can
only account for its absence by supposing the murderer to have
neglected the precaution of supplying himself with it before
pushing off. In the act of consigning the corpse to the water, he
would unquestionably have noticed his oversight; but then no
remedy would have been at hand. Any risk would have been
preferred to a return to that accursed shore. Having rid himself
of his ghastly charge, the murderer would have hastened to the
city. There, at some obscure wharf, he would have leaped on land.
But the boat—would he have secured it? He would have been in too
great haste for such things as securing a boat. Moreover, in
fastening it to the wharf, he would have felt as if securing
evidence against himself. His natural thought would have been to
cast from him, as far as possible, all that had held connection
with his crime. He would not only have fled from the wharf, but
he would not have permitted the boat to remain. Assuredly he
would have cast it adrift. Let us pursue our fancies.—In the
morning, the wretch is stricken with unutterable horror at
finding that the boat has been picked up and detained at a
locality which he is in the daily habit of frequenting —at a
locality, perhaps, which his duty compels him to frequent. The
next night, without daring to ask for the rudder, he removes it.
Now where is that rudderless boat? Let it be one of our first
purposes to discover. With the first glimpse we obtain of it, the
dawn of our success shall begin. This boat shall guide us, with a
rapidity which will surprise even ourselves, to him who employed
it in the midnight of the fatal Sabbath. Corroboration will rise
upon corroboration, and the murderer will be traced.”

[For reasons which we shall not specify, but which to many
readers will appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here
omitting, from the MSS. placed in our hands, such portion as
details the following up of the apparently slight clew obtained
by Dupin. We feel it advisable only to state, in brief, that the
result desired was brought to pass; and that the Prefect
fulfilled punctually, although with reluctance, the terms of his
compact with the Chevalier. Mr. Poe’s article concludes with the
following words.—Eds. (*23)]

It will be understood that I speak of coincidences and no more.
What I have said above upon this topic must suffice. In my own
heart there dwells no faith in præter-nature. That Nature and its
God are two, no man who thinks, will deny. That the latter,
creating the former, can, at will, control or modify it, is also
unquestionable. I say “at will;” for the question is of will, and
not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not
that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in
imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin
these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which
could lie in the Future. With God all is Now.

I repeat, then, that I speak of these things only as of
coincidences. And farther: in what I relate it will be seen that
between the fate of the unhappy Mary Cecilia Rogers, so far as
that fate is known, and the fate of one Marie Rogêt up to a
certain epoch in her history, there has existed a parallel in the
contemplation of whose wonderful exactitude the reason becomes
embarrassed. I say all this will be seen. But let it not for a
moment be supposed that, in proceeding with the sad narrative of
Marie from the epoch just mentioned, and in tracing to its
dénouement the mystery which enshrouded her, it is my covert
design to hint at an extension of the parallel, or even to
suggest that the measures adopted in Paris for the discovery of
the assassin of a grisette, or measures founded in any similar
ratiocination, would produce any similar result.

For, in respect to the latter branch of the supposition, it
should be considered that the most trifling variation in the
facts of the two cases might give rise to the most important
miscalculations, by diverting thoroughly the two courses of
events; very much as, in arithmetic, an error which, in its own
individuality, may be inappreciable, produces, at length, by dint
of multiplication at all points of the process, a result
enormously at variance with truth. And, in regard to the former
branch, we must not fail to hold in view that the very Calculus
of Probabilities to which I have referred, forbids all idea of
the extension of the parallel—forbids it with a positiveness
strong and decided just in proportion as this parallel has
already been long-drawn and exact. This is one of those anomalous
propositions which, seemingly appealing to thought altogether
apart from the mathematical, is yet one which only the
mathematician can fully entertain. Nothing, for example, is more
difficult than to convince the merely general reader that the
fact of sixes having been thrown twice in succession by a player
at dice, is sufficient cause for betting the largest odds that
sixes will not be thrown in the third attempt. A suggestion to
this effect is usually rejected by the intellect at once. It does
not appear that the two throws which have been completed, and
which lie now absolutely in the Past, can have influence upon the
throw which exists only in the Future. The chance for throwing
sixes seems to be precisely as it was at any ordinary time—that
is to say, subject only to the influence of the various other
throws which may be made by the dice. And this is a reflection
which appears so exceedingly obvious that attempts to controvert
it are received more frequently with a derisive smile than with
anything like respectful attention. The error here involved—a
gross error redolent of mischief—I cannot pretend to expose
within the limits assigned me at present; and with the
philosophical it needs no exposure. It may be sufficient here to
say that it forms one of an infinite series of mistakes which
arise in the path of Reason through her propensity for seeking
truth in detail.

FOOTNOTES—Marie Rogêt