in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation.  It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be.  Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure.  We make chance a matter of absolute calculation.  We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the mathematical formulae of the schools.

“I repeat that it is no more than fact, that the larger portion of all truth has sprung from the collateral; and it is but in accordance with the spirit of the principle involved in this fact, that I would divert inquiry, in the present case, from the trodden and hitherto unfruitful ground of the event itself, to the contemporary circumstances which surround it.  While you ascertain the validity of the affidavits, I will examine the newspapers more generally than you have as yet done.  So far, we have only reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be strange indeed if a comprehensive survey, such as I propose, of the public prints, will not afford us some minute points which shall establish a direction for inquiry.”

In pursuance of Dupin’s suggestion, I made scrupulous examination of the affair of the affidavits.  The result was a firm conviction of their validity, and of the consequent innocence of St. Eustache.  In the mean time my friend occupied himself, with what seemed to me a minuteness altogether objectless, in a scrutiny of the various newspaper files.  At the end of a week he placed before me the following extracts: 

“About three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to the present, was caused by the disappearance of this same Marie Rogêt, from the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc, in the Palais Royal.  At the end of a week, however, she re-appeared at her customary comptoir, as well as ever, with the exception of a slight paleness not altogether usual.  It was given out by Monsieur Le Blanc and her mother, that she had merely been on a visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was speedily hushed up.  We presume that the present absence is a freak of the same nature, and that, at the expiration of a week, or perhaps of a month, we shall have her among us again.” — Evening Paper — Monday June 23. {*17}

“An evening journal of yesterday, refers to a former mysterious disappearance of Mademoiselle Rogêt.  It is well known that, during the week of her absence from Le Blanc’s parfumerie, she was in the company of a young naval officer, much noted for his debaucheries.  A quarrel, it is supposed, providentially led to her return home.  We have the name of the Lothario in question, who is, at present, stationed in Paris, but, for obvious reasons, forbear to make it public.” — Le Mercurie — Tuesday Morning, June 24. {*18}