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 visiter, 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 Crebillon's 'Atrée.' "
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
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 Isitsoornot, 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 denouement 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 "Isitsoornot" 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 "Isitsoornot" 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 "Isitsoornot" 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
"Isitsoornot," 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, engaged a porter to carry them, went with him down to the
sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance vessel that might
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 37