“Let him talk,” said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply.  “Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience, I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle.  Nevertheless, that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound.  In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna, —­ or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish.  But he is a good creature after all.  I like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity.  I mean the way he has ’de nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.’ " *

* Rousseau — Nouvelle Heloise.

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THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET.{*1}

A SEQUEL TO “THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.”

Es giebt eine Reihe idealischer Begebenheiten, die der Wirklichkeit parallel lauft.  Selten fallen sie zusammen.  Menschen und zufalle modifieiren gewohulich die idealische Begebenheit, so dass sie unvollkommen erscheint, und ihre Folgen gleichfalls unvollkommen sind.  So bei der Reformation; statt des Protestantismus kam das Lutherthum hervor.

There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones.  They rarely coincide.  Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect.  Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism.

— Novalis. {*2} Moral Ansichten.

THERE are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.  Such sentiments — for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought — such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities.  Now this Calculus is, in its essence, purely mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation.

The extraordinary details which I am now called upon to make public, will be found to form, as regards sequence of time, the primary branch of a series of scarcely intelligible coincidences, whose secondary or concluding branch will be recognized by all readers in the late murder of Mary Cecila Rogers, at New York.