duration of the corpse on the shore could operate to multiply traces
of the assassins. Nor can I.
" 'And furthermore it is exceedingly improbable,' continues our
journal, 'that any villains who had committed such a murder as is
here supposed, would have thrown the body in without weight to sink
it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken.' Observe,
here, the laughable confusion of thought! No one - not even L'Etoile
- disputes the murder committed _on the body found_. The marks of
violence are too obvious. It is our reasoner's object merely to show
that this body is not Marie's. He wishes to prove that Marie is not
assassinated - not that the corpse was not. Yet his observation
proves only the latter point. Here is a corpse without weight
attached. Murderers, casting it in, would not have failed to attach a
weight. Therefore it was not thrown in by murderers. This is all
which is proved, if any thing is. The question of identity is not
even approached, and L'Etoile has been at great pains merely to
gainsay now what it has admitted only a moment before. 'We are
perfectly convinced,' it says, 'that the body found was that of a
murdered female.'
"Nor is this the sole instance, even in this division of his subject,
where our reasoner unwittingly reasons against himself. His evident
object, I have already said, is to reduce, us much as possible, the
interval between Marie's disappearance and the finding of the corpse.
Yet we find him urging the point that no person saw the girl from the
moment of her leaving her mother's house. 'We have no evidence,' he
says, 'that Marie RogΩt was in the land of the living after nine
o'clock on Sunday, June the twenty-second.' As his argument is
obviously an ex parte one, he should, at least, have left this matter
out of sight; for had any one been known to see Marie, say on Monday,
or on Tuesday, the interval in question would have been much reduced,
and, by his own ratiocination, the probability much diminished of the
corpse being that of the grisette. It is, nevertheless, amusing to
observe that L'Etoile insists upon its point in the full belief of
its furthering its general argument.
"Reperuse now that portion of this argument which has reference to
the identification of the corpse by Beauvais. In regard to the hair
upon the arm, L'Etoile has been obviously disingenuous. M. Beauvais,
not being an idiot, could never have urged, in identification of the
corpse, simply hair upon its arm. No arm is without hair. The
generality of the expression of L'Etoile is a mere perversion of the
witness' phraseology. He must have spoken of some peculiarity in this
hair. It must have been a peculiarity of color, of quantity, of
length, or of situation.
" 'Her foot,' says the journal, 'was small - so are thousands of
feet. Her garter is no proof whatever - nor is her shoe - for shoes
and garters are sold in packages. The same may be said of the flowers
in her hat. One thing upon which M. Beauvais strongly insists is,
that the clasp on the garter found, had been set back to take it in.
This amounts to nothing; for most women find it proper to take a pair
of garters home and fit them to the size of the limbs they are to
encircle, rather than to try them in the store where they purchase.'
Here it is difficult to suppose the reasoner in earnest. Had M.
Beauvais, in his search for the body of Marie, discovered a corpse
corresponding in general size and appearance to the missing girl, he
would have been warranted (without reference to the question of
habiliment at all) in forming an opinion that his search had been
successful. If, in addition to the point of general size and contour,
he had found upon the arm a peculiar hairy appearance which he had
observed upon the living Marie, his opinion might have been justly
strengthened; and the increase of positiveness might well have been
in the ratio of the peculiarity, or unusualness, of the hairy mark.
If, the feet of Marie being small, those of the corpse were also
small, the increase of probability that the body was that of Marie
would not be an increase in a ratio merely arithmetical, but in one
highly geometrical, or accumulative. Add to all this shoes such as
she had been known to wear upon the day of her disappearance, and,
although these shoes may be 'sold in packages,' you so far augment
the probability as to verge upon the certain. What, of itself, would
be no evidence of identity, becomes through its corroborative
position, proof most sure. Give us, then, flowers in the hat
corresponding to those worn by the missing girl, and we seek for
nothing farther. If only one flower, we seek for nothing farther -
what then if two or three, or more? Each successive one is multiple
evidence - proof not _added_ to proof, but multiplied by hundreds or
thousands. Let us now discover, upon the deceased, garters such as
the living used, and it is almost folly to proceed. But these garters
are found to be tightened, by the setting back of a clasp, in just
such a manner as her own had been tightened by Marie, shortly
previous to her leaving home. It is now madness or hypocrisy to
doubt. What L'Etoile says in respect to this abbreviation of the
garter's being an usual occurrence, shows nothing beyond its own
pertinacity in error. The elastic nature of the clasp-garter is
self-demonstration of the unusualness of the abbreviation. What is
made to adjust itself, must of necessity require foreign adjustment
but rarely. It must have been by an accident, in its strictest sense,
that these garters of Marie needed the tightening described. They
alone would have amply established her identity. But it is not that
the corpse was found to have the garters of the missing girl, or
found to have her shoes, or her bonnet, or the flowers of her bonnet,
or her feet, or a peculiar mark upon the arm, or her general size and
appearance - it is that the corpse had each, and _all collectively_.
Could it be proved that the editor of L'Etoile _really_ entertained a
doubt, under the circumstances, there would be no need, in his case,
of a commission de lunatico inquirendo. He has thought it sagacious
to echo the small talk of the lawyers, who, for the most part,
content themselves with echoing the rectangular precepts of the
courts. I would here observe that very much of what is rejected as
evidence by a court, is the best of evidence to the intellect. For
the court, guiding itself by the general principles of evidence - the
recognized and _booked_ principles - is averse from swerving at
particular instances. And this steadfast adherence to principle, with
rigorous disregard of the conflicting exception, is a sure mode of
attaining the maximum of attainable truth, in any long sequence of
time. The practice, in mass, is therefore philosophical; but it is
not the less certain that it engenders vast individual error. {*16}
"In respect to the insinuations levelled at Beauvais, you will be
willing to dis
miss them in a breath. You have already fathomed the
true character of this good gentleman. He is a busy-body, with much
of romance and little of wit. Any one so constituted will readily so
conduct himself, upon occasion of real excitement, as to render
himself liable to suspicion on the part of the over acute, or the
ill- disposed. M. Beauvais (as it appears from your notes) had some
personal interviews with the editor of L'Etoile, and offended him by
venturing an opinion that the corpse, notwithstanding the theory of
the editor, was, in sober fact, that of Marie. 'He persists,' says
the paper, 'in asserting the corpse to be that of Marie, but cannot
give a circumstance, in addition to those which we have commented
upon, to make others believe.' Now, without re-adverting to the fact
that stronger evidence 'to make others believe,' could never have
been adduced, it may be remarked that a man may very well be
understood to believe, in a case of this kind, without the ability to
advance a single reason for the belief of a second party. Nothing is
more vague than impressions of individual identity. Each man
recognizes his neighbor, yet there are few instances in which any one
is prepared to give a reason for his recognition. The editor of
L'Etoile had no right to be offended at M. Beauvais' unreasoning
belief.
"The suspicious circumstances which invest him, will be found to
tally much better with my hypothesis of romantic busy-bodyism, than
with the reasoner's suggestion of guilt. Once adopting the more
charitable interpretation, we shall find no difficulty in
comprehending the rose in the key-hole; the 'Marie' upon the slate;
the 'elbowing the male relatives out of the way;' the 'aversion to
permitting them to see the body;' the caution given to Madame B----,
that she must hold no conversation with the gendarmeuntil his return
(Beauvais'); and, lastly, his apparent determination 'that nobody
should have anything to do with the proceedings except himself.' It
seems to me unquestionable that Beauvais was a suitor of Marie's;
that she coquetted with him; and that he was ambitious of being
thought to enjoy her fullest intimacy and confidence. I shall say
nothing more upon this point; and, as the evidence fully rebuts the
assertion of L'Etoile, touching the matter of apathy on the part of
the mother and other relatives - an apathy inconsistent with the
supposition of their believing the corpse to be that of the
perfumery- girl - we shall now proceed as if the question of identity
were settled to our perfect satisfaction."
"And what," I here demanded, "do you think of the opinions of Le
Commerciel?"
"That, in spirit, they are far more worthy of attention than any
which have been promulgated upon the subject. The deductions from the
premises are philosophical and acute; but the premises, in two
instances, at least, are founded in imperfect observation. Le
Commerciel wishes to intimate that Marie was seized by some gang of
low ruffians not far from her mother's door. 'It is impossible,' it
urges, 'that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman
was, should have passed three blocks without some one having seen
her.' This is the idea of a man long resident in Paris - a public man
- and one whose walks to and fro in the city, have been mostly
limited to the vicinity of the public offices. He is aware that he
seldom passes so far as a dozen blocks from his own bureau, without
being recognized and accosted. And, knowing the extent of his
personal acquaintance with others, and of others with him, he
compares his notoriety with that of the perfumery-girl, finds no
great difference between them, and reaches at once the conclusion
that she, in her walks, would be equally liable to recognition with
himself in his. This could only be the case were her walks of the
same unvarying, methodical character, and within the same species of
limited region as are his own. He passes to and fro, at regular
intervals, within a confined periphery, abounding in individuals who
are led to observation of his person through interest in the kindred
nature of his occupation with their own. But the walks of Marie may,
in general, be supposed discursive. In this particular instance, it
will be understood as most probable, that she proceeded upon a route
of more than average diversity from her accustomed ones. The parallel
which we imagine to have existed in the mind of Le Commerciel would
only be sustained in the event of the two individuals' traversing the
whole city. In this case, granting the personal acquaintances to be
equal, the chances would be also equal that an equal number of
personal rencounters would be made. For my own part, I should hold it
not only as possible, but as very far more than probable, that Marie
might have proceeded, at any given period, by any one of the many
routes between her own residence and that of her aunt, without
meeting a single individual whom she knew, or by whom she was known.
In viewing this question in its full and proper light, we must hold
steadily in mind the great disproportion between the personal
acquaintances of even the most noted individual in Paris, and the
entire population of Paris itself.
"But whatever force there may still appear to be in the suggestion of
Le Commerciel, will be much diminished when we take into
consideration the hour at which the girl went abroad. 'It was when
the streets were full of people,' says Le Commerciel, 'that she went
out.' But not so. It was at nine o'clock in the morning. Now at nine
o'clock of every morning in the week, _with the exception of Sunday_,
the streets of the city are, it is true, thronged with people. At
nine on Sunday, the populace are chiefly within doors _preparing for
church_. No observing person can have failed to notice the peculiarly
deserted air of the town, from about eight until ten on the morning
of every Sabbath. Between ten and eleven the streets are thronged,
but not at so early a period as that designated.
"There is another point at which there seems a deficiency of
observation on the part of Le Commerciel. 'A piece,' it says, 'of one
of the unfortunate girl's petticoats, two feet long, and one foot
wide, 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.' Whether this idea is, or is not well
founded, we will endeavor to see hereafter; but by 'fellows who have
no pocket-handkerchiefs' the editor intends the lowest class of
ruffians. These, however, are the very description of people who will
always be found to have handkerchiefs even when destitute of shirts.
You must have had occasion to observe how absolutely indispensable,
of late years, to the thorough blackguard, has become the
pocket-handkerchief."
"And what are we to think," I asked, "of the article in Le Soleil?"
"That it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrot - in which
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
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