Short Fiction Edgar Allan Poe (books for men to read .txt) đ
- Author: Edgar Allan Poe
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âAnd now what are we to make of the argument, that the body found could not be that of Marie RogĂȘt, because, three days only having elapsed, this body was found floating? If drowned, being a woman, she might never have sunk; or having sunk, might have reappeared in twenty-four hours, or less. But no one supposes her to have been drowned; and, dying before being thrown into the river, she might have been found floating at any period afterwards whatever.
âââBut,â says LâEtoile, âif the body had been kept in its mangled state on shore until Tuesday night, some trace would be found on shore of the murderers.â Here it is at first difficult to perceive the intention of the reasoner. He means to anticipate what he imagines would be an objection to his theoryâ âviz.: that the body was kept on shore two days, suffering rapid decompositionâ âmore rapid than if immersed in water. He supposes that, had this been the case, it might have appeared at the surface on the Wednesday, and thinks that only under such circumstances it could so have appeared. He is accordingly in haste to show that it was not kept on shore; for, if so, âsome trace would be found on shore of the murderers.â I presume you smile at the sequitur. You cannot be made to see how the mere duration of the corpse on the shore could operate to multiply traces of the assassins. Nor can I.
âââAnd furthermore it is exceedingly improbable,â continues our journal, âthat 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.â Observe, here, the laughable confusion of thought! No oneâ ânot even LâEtoileâ âdisputes the murder committed on the body found. The marks of violence are too obvious. It is our reasonerâs object merely to show that this body is not Marieâs. He wishes to prove that Marie is not assassinatedâ ânot 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 anything is. The question of identity is not even approached, and LâEtoile has been at great pains merely to gainsay now what it has admitted only a moment before. âWe are perfectly convinced,â it says, âthat the body found was that of a murdered female.â
âNor 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, as much as possible, the interval between Marieâs 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 motherâs house. âWe have no evidence,â he says, âthat Marie RogĂȘt was in the land of the living after nine oâclock on Sunday, June the twenty-second.â As his argument is obviously an ex parte one, he should, at least, have left this matter out of sight; for had anyone 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 LâEtoile insists upon its point in the full belief of its furthering its general argument.
âReperuse 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, LâEtoile 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 LâEtoile is a mere perversion of the witnessâ 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.
âââHer foot,â says the journal, âwas smallâ âso are thousands of feet. Her garter is no proof whateverâ ânor is her shoeâ âfor 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.â 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
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