behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of
women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball,
and the fellow was suffered to go 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
fac-simile? 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 now him 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