The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (novels in english txt) 📖

The Murders In The Rue Morgue

 

by Edgar Allan Poe

 

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid

himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond

all conjecture.

 

—_Sir Thomas Browne._

 

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in

themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them

only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they

are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source

of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical

ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into

action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which

disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial

occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of

conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a

degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension

præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and

essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.

 

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by

mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it

which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations,

has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate

is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the

one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess,

in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am

not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar

narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore,

take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective

intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the

unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of

chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre

motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is

mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention

is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an

oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible

moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such

oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the

more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In

draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but

little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished,

and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what

advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior

acumen. To be less abstract - Let us suppose a game of draughts

where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no

oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can

be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché

movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.

Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the

spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not

unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime

indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or

hurry into miscalculation.

 

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the

calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have

been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while

eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a

similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best

chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player

of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in

all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which

includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate

advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform,

and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible

to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember

distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very

well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the

mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally

comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by

“the book,” are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good

playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the

skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of

observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the

difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so

much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the

observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe.

Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the

object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game.

He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully

with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of

assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and

honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon

each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses,

gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of

certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of

gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make

another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by

the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or

inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with

the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its

concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their

arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation -

all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of

the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been

played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and

thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of

purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of

their own.

 

The analytical power should not be confounded with ample ingenuity;

for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is

often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining

power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the

phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ,

supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in

those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have

attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between

ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far

greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but

of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact,

that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative

never otherwise than analytic.

 

The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the

light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

 

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18—, I

there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young

gentleman was of an excellent - indeed of an illustrious family, but,

by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty

that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased

to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his

fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his

possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income

arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to

procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its

superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris

these are easily obtained.

 

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre,

where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare

and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. We saw

each other again and again. I was deeply interested in the little

family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a

Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is his theme. I was astonished,

too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my

soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness

of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I

felt that the societyof such a man would be to me a treasure beyond

price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length

arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and

as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his

own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing

in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common

temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through

superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its

fall in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.

 

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we

should have been regarded as madmen - although, perhaps, as madmen of

a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no

visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully

kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many

years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed

within ourselves alone.

 

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?)

to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this

bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself

up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity

would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her

presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the messy

shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which,

strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of

rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams -

reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the

advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets

arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide

until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the

populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet

observation can afford.

 

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from

his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar

analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight

in its exercise - if not exactly in its display - and did not

hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boastedto me, with

a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore

windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by

direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own.

His manner at these moments was frigid and