A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental
      dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or
      carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the
      tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment,
      hesitation, eagerness or trepidation—all afford, to his
      apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of
      affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is
      in full possession of the contents of each hand, and
      thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of
      purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces
      of their own. The analytical power should not be confounded with ample
      ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the
      ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The
      constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually
      manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe
      erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a
      primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose
      intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted
      general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity
      and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater,
      indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a
      character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact,
      that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the _truly_
      imaginative never otherwise than analytic. The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in
      the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced. Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of
      18—, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent, indeed of an
      illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had
      been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character
      succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the
      world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy
      of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small
      remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this,
      he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the
      necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its
      superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in
      Paris these are easily obtained. Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue
      Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the
      same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer
      communion. We saw each other again and again. I was deeply
      interested in the little family history which he detailed to me
      with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere
      self is his theme. I was astonished, too, at the vast extent of
      his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within me
      by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I felt that the
      society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and
      this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged
      that we should live together during my stay in the city; and as
      my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his
      own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and
      furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of
      our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long
      deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and
      tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of the
      Faubourg St. Germain. Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the
      world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps,
      as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We
      admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had
      been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and
      it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known
      in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone. It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call
      it?) to be enamored of the night for her own sake; and into this
      _bizarrerie_, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving
      myself up to his wild whims with a perfect _abandon_. The sable
      divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could
      counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we
      closed all the messy shutters of our old building; lighting a
      couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the
      ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then
      busied our souls in dreams—reading, writing, or conversing, until
      warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we
      sallied forth into the streets arm in arm, continuing the topics
      of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking,
      amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that
      infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford. At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although
      from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a
      peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an
      eager delight in its exercise—if not exactly in its display—and
      did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boasted
      to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to
      himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up
      such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his
      intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was
      frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while
      his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would
      have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire
      distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these moods, I
      often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part
      Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the
      creative and the resolvent. Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am
      detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have
      described in the Frenchman, was merely the result of an excited,
      or perhaps of a diseased intelligence. But of the character of
      his remarks at the periods in question an example will best
      convey the idea. We were strolling one night down a long dirty street in the
      vicinity of the Palais Royal.