Chapter 2

In short, I never yet
encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of
equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point
of his faith that x2+px was absolutely and unconditionally equal
to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you
please, that you believe occasions may occur where x2+px is not
altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand what you
mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond
doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.

“I mean to say,” continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his
last observations, “that if the Minister had been no more than a
mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of
giving me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician
and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with
reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew
him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I
considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial
modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and
events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate—the
waylayings to which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, I
reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. His
frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed by the
Prefect as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses,
to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus
the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G——, in
fact, did finally arrive—the conviction that the letter was not
upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought,
which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now,
concerning the invariable principle of policial action in
searches for articles concealed—I felt that this whole train of
thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister.
It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks
of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to
see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would
be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes,
to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in
fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to
simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of
choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect
laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was
just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its
being so very self-evident.”

“Yes,” said I, “I remember his merriment well. I really thought
he would have fallen into convulsions.”

“The material world,” continued Dupin, “abounds with very strict
analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has
been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may
be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a
description. The principle of the vis inertiæ, for example, seems
to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true
in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in
motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is
commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter,
that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more
constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of
inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more
embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of
their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street
signs, over the shop-doors, are the most attractive of
attention?”

“I have never given the matter a thought,” I said.

“There is a game of puzzles,” he resumed, “which is played upon a
map. One party playing requires another to find a given word—the
name of town, river, state or empire—any word, in short, upon the
motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game
generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the
most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as
stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the
other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards
of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively
obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous
with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to
pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and
too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears,
somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He
never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister
had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the
whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world
from perceiving it.

“But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and
discriminating ingenuity of D——; upon the fact that the document
must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good
purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect,
that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary’s
ordinary search—the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this
letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and
sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.

“Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green
spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at
the Ministerial hotel. I found D—— at home, yawning, lounging,
and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last
extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic
human being now alive—but that is only when nobody sees him.

“To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented
the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I
cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while
seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.

“I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he
sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters
and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few
books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny,
I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion.

“At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a
trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by
a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the
middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four
compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary
letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn
nearly in two, across the middle—as if a design, in the first
instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered,
or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the
D—— cipher _very_ conspicuously, and was addressed, in a
diminutive female hand, to D——, the minister, himself. It was
thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into
one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

“No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to
be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all
appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect
had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and
black, with the D—— cipher; there it was small and red, with the
ducal arms of the S—— family. Here, the address, to the Minister,
diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain
royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone
formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of
these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and
torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true
methodical habits of D——, and so suggestive of a design to delude
the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the
document—these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive
situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor,
and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I
had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly
corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to
suspect.

“I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I
maintained a most animated discussion with the Minister upon a
topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite
him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this
examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and
arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a
discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have
entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed
them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the
broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having
been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a
reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed
the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to
me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out,
re-directed, and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and
took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the
table.

“The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed,
quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus
engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard
immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded
by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified
mob. D—— rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In
the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it
in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards
externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my
lodgings—imitating the D—— cipher, very readily, by means of a
seal formed of bread.

“The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic
behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of
women and children. It proved, however, to have been without
ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a
drunkard. When he had gone, D—— came from the window, whither I
had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view.
Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a
man in my own pay.”

“But what purpose had you,” I asked, “in replacing the letter by
a fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit,
to have seized it openly, and departed?”

“D——,” replied Dupin, “is a desperate man, and a man of nerve.
His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his
interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never
have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of
Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart
from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions.
In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For
eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She has
now him in hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in
his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was.
Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than
awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus
Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of
singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the
present instance I have no sympathy—at least no pity—for him who
descends. He is that monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of
genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to know
the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her
whom the Prefect terms ‘a certain personage’ he is reduced to
opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”

“How? did you put any thing particular in it?”

“Why—it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior
blank—that would have been insulting. D——, at Vienna once, did me
an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I
should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in
regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I
thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted
with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet
the words—

“‘— — Un dessein si funeste,
S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.

They are to be found in Crébillon’s ‘Atrée.’”

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE

Truth is stranger than fiction.—_Old Saying_

Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work
which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at
all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my
knowledge, by any American—if we except, perhaps, the author of
the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—having had occasion, I
say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very
remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that
the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error
respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as
that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the
_dénouement_ there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as
it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
farther.

For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
inquisitive reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the
meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I
there discovered.

It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a
certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not
only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the
prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his
dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the
executioner.

Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with
a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit
upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was
interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit
from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had
occurred an idea.

Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would
either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty,
or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the
attempt.

Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year
(which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her
father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her
hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts—(he had intended to take
it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day,
only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he
gives all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand
vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of
giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When,
therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king,
and did actually marry him despite her father’s excellent advice
not to do any thing of the kind—when she would and did marry him,
I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as
thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.

It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in
her mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I
forget what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch
sufficiently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy
conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing,
she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore
her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on
the morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on
account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept
well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a
black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone,
of course) to her sister. When the day broke, it so happened that
this history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade,
in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it
was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a thing very
little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel!

The king’s curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say,
even over his sound religious principles, induced him for this
once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning,
for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it
fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, I think it was)
and the rat.

The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only
put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat
was blue) but before she well knew what she was about, found
herself deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference
(if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green
wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was
wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even
more profoundly interested than with the other—and, as the day
broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen’s
endeavors to get through with it in time for the bowstringing),
there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as
before, for twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a
similar accident with a similar result; and then the next—and
then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch,
having been unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his
vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one nights,
either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or
gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more
probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father
confessor. At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally
descended from Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole seven
baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up
from under the trees in the garden of Eden; Scheherazade, I say,
finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.

Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it
upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant—but
alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than
true, and I am indebted altogether to the “Isitsöornot” for the
means of correcting the error. “Le mieux,” says a French proverb,
“est l’ennemi du bien,” and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had
inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she
put them out at compound interest until they amounted to
seventy-seven.

“My dear sister,” said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I
quote the language of the “Isitsöornot” at this point, verbatim)
“my dear sister,” said she, “now that all this little difficulty
about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is
so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great
indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry
to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion
of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and
more interesting adventures than those which I related; but the
truth is, I felt sleepy on the particular night of their
narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short—a grievous
piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah will
forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great
neglect—and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in
order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible
noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases)
with the sequel of this very remarkable story.”

Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the
“Isitsöornot,” expressed no very particular intensity of
gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at
length ceased snoring, and finally said, “Hum!” and then “Hoo!”
when the queen, understanding these words (which are no doubt
Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would do his
best not to snore any more—the queen, I say, having arranged
these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into
the history of Sinbad the sailor:

“‘At length, in my old age,’ [these are the words of Sinbad
himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]—‘at length, in my old age,
and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became
once more possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries;
and one day, without acquainting any of my family with my design,
I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious
and least bulky, and, engaging a porter to carry them, went with
him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance
vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region
which I had not as yet explored.

“‘Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down
beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of
perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever.
At length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or
humming sound; and the porter, after listening awhile, declared
that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and
then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object
which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of the
horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in
size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a
great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came
toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of
foam around its breast, and illuminating all that part of the sea
through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended
far off into the distance.

“‘As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length
was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and
it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, O
most sublime and munificent of the Caliphs. Its body, which was
unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a
jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated
above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak
that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath
the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and
then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely
covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in
misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from it
there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of
the whole body.

“‘This horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive;
but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with
at least four score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets
like those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around
the body in two rows, one above the other, and parallel to the
blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an
eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger
than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold.

“‘Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with
the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by
necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like
a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the
manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do
the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike,
only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that served
for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick
breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking,
disagreeable noise.

“‘Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but
it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a
nearer look, we perceived upon the creature’s back a vast number
of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much
resembling them, except that they wore no garments (as men do),
being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an ugly uncomfortable
covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the
skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put
them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads
were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I
thought might have been intended to answer as turbans, but I soon
discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I
therefore concluded they were contrivances designed, by their
great weight, to keep the heads of the animals steady and safe
upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the creatures were
fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,) such as
we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so
that it was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their
heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time;
and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their
noses—a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively
in an awful degree.

“‘When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood,
it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and
emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense
cloud of smoke, and a noise that I can compare to nothing but
thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we saw one of the odd
man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a
trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he
presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents,
that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not
come altogether through the nose.

“‘Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply,
as I could in no manner understand what was said; and in this
difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through
affright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of
monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those
were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied,
as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before
heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels
of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means
of inflicting misery upon mankind; that the things upon its back
were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a
little larger and more savage; and that these vermin had their
uses, however evil—for, through the torture they caused the beast
by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree
of wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and
so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.

“This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without
once even looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the
hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an
opposite direction, so that, by these means, he finally made his
escape with my bundles, of which I have no doubt he took
excellent care—although this is a point I cannot determine, as I
do not remember that I ever beheld him again.

“‘For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin
(who had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon
overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which
immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea.

“‘I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home
to peril my life in such adventures as this; but regret being
useless, I made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to
secure the goodwill of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and
who appeared to exercise authority over his fellows. I succeeded
so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the creature
bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even
went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was
vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was
enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it
comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the world.