I really thought
      he would have fallen into convulsions.”

      “The material world,” continued Dupin, “abounds with very strict
      analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has
      been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may
      be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a
      description. The principle of the vis inertiæ, for example, seems
      to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true
      in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in
      motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is
      commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter,
      that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more
      constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of
      inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more
      embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of
      their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street
      signs, over the shop-doors, are the most attractive of
      attention?”

      “I have never given the matter a thought,” I said. “There is a game of puzzles,” he resumed, “which is played upon a
      map. One party playing requires another to find a given word—the
      name of town, river, state or empire—any word, in short, upon the
      motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game
      generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the
      most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as
      stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the
      other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards
      of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively
      obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous
      with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to
      pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and
      too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears,
      somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He
      never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister
      had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the
      whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world
      from perceiving it. “But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and
      discriminating ingenuity of D——; upon the fact that the document
      must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good
      purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect,
      that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary’s
      ordinary search—the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this
      letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and
      sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all. “Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green
      spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at
      the Ministerial hotel. I found D—— at home, yawning, lounging,
      and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last
      extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic
      human being now alive—but that is only when nobody sees him. “To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented
      the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I
      cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while
      seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host. “I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he
      sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters
      and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few
      books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny,
      I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. “At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a
      trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by
      a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the
      middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four
      compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary
      letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn
      nearly in two, across the middle—as if a design, in the first
      instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered,
      or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the
      D—— cipher _very_ conspicuously, and was addressed, in a
      diminutive female hand, to D——, the minister, himself. It was
      thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into
      one of the uppermost divisions of the rack. “No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to
      be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all
      appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect
      had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and
      black, with the D—— cipher; there it was small and red, with the
      ducal arms of the S—— family. Here, the address, to the Minister,
      diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain
      royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone
      formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of
      these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and
      torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true
      methodical habits of D——, and so suggestive of a design to delude
      the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the
      document—these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive
      situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor,
      and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I
      had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly
      corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to
      suspect. “I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I
      maintained a most animated discussion with the Minister upon a
      topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite
      him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this
      examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and
      arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a
      discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have
      entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed
      them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the
      broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having
      been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a
      reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed
      the original fold. This discovery was sufficient.