Chapter 132

AND OTHER STORIES 119 however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go on 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 facsimile ? 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 him now 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 anything particular in it ?” “Why — it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank — that would have been insulting. D , at