Within were three or four large stones, forming a kind of
      seat with a back and footstool. On the upper stone was discovered
      a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf. A parasol,
      gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief, were also here found. The
      handkerchief bore the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’ Fragments of dress
      were seen on the branches around. The earth was trampled, the
      bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a violent
      struggle. “Notwithstanding the acclamation with which the discovery of this
      thicket was received by the press, and the unanimity with which
      it was supposed to indicate the precise scene of the outrage, it
      must be admitted that there was some very good reason for doubt. That it was the scene, I may or I may not believe—but there was
      excellent reason for doubt. Had the true scene been, as Le
      Commerciel suggested, in the neighborhood of the Rue Pavée St.
      Andrée, the perpetrators of the crime, supposing them still
      resident in Paris, would naturally have been stricken with terror
      at the public attention thus acutely directed into the proper
      channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have
      arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to
      redivert this attention. And thus, the thicket of the Barrière du
      Roule having been already suspected, the idea of placing the
      articles where they were found, might have been naturally
      entertained. There is no real evidence, although Le Soleil so
      supposes, that the articles discovered had been more than a very
      few days in the thicket; while there is much circumstantial proof
      that they could not have remained there, without attracting
      attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal
      Sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. ‘They were all _mildewed_ down hard,’ says Le Soleil, adopting
      the opinions of its predecessors, ‘with the action of the rain,
      and stuck together from _mildew_. The grass had grown around and
      over some of them. The silk of the parasol was strong, but the
      threads of it were run together within. The upper part, where it
      had been doubled and folded, was all _mildewed_ and rotten, and
      tore on being opened.’ In respect to the grass having ‘grown
      around and over some of them,’ it is obvious that the fact could
      only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the
      recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the
      articles and took them home before they had been seen by a third
      party. But grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather,
      (such as was that of the period of the murder,) as much as two or
      three inches in a single day. A parasol lying upon a newly turfed
      ground, might, in a single week, be entirely concealed from sight
      by the upspringing grass. And touching that mildew upon which the
      editor of Le Soleil so pertinaciously insists, that he employs
      the word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just
      quoted, is he really unaware of the nature of this mildew? Is he
      to be told that it is one of the many classes of fungus, of which
      the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence within
      twenty-four hours? “Thus we see, at a glance, that what has been most triumphantly
      adduced in support of the idea that the articles had been ‘for at
      least three or four weeks’ in the thicket, is most absurdly null
      as regards any evidence of that fact. On the other hand, it is
      exceedingly difficult to believe that these articles could have
      remained in the thicket specified, for a longer period than a
      single week—for a longer period than from one Sunday to the next. Those who know any thing of the vicinity of Paris, know the
      extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great
      distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an unexplored, or even
      an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not
      for a moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at heart a
      lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat of
      this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even during the
      weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of
      natural loveliness which immediately surround us. At every second
      step, he will find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and
      personal intrusion of some ruffian or party of carousing
      blackguards. He will seek privacy amid the densest foliage, all
      in vain. Here are the very nooks where the unwashed most
      abound—here are the temples most desecrate. With sickness of the
      heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted Paris as to a
      less odious because less incongruous sink of pollution. But if
      the vicinity of the city is so beset during the working days of
      the week, how much more so on the Sabbath! It is now especially
      that, released from the claims of labor, or deprived of the
      customary opportunities of crime, the town blackguard seeks the
      precincts of the town, not through love of the rural, which in
      his heart he despises, but by way of escape from the restraints
      and conventionalities of society. He desires less the fresh air
      and the green trees, than the utter license of the country. Here,
      at the road-side inn, or beneath the foliage of the woods, he
      indulges, unchecked by any eye except those of his boon
      companions, in all the mad excess of a counterfeit hilarity—the
      joint offspring of liberty and of rum. I say nothing more than
      what must be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when I
      repeat that the circumstance of the articles in question having
      remained undiscovered, for a longer period than from one Sunday
      to another, in any thicket in the immediate neighborhood of
      Paris, is to be looked upon as little less than miraculous. “But there are not wanting other grounds for the suspicion that
      the articles were placed in the thicket with the view of
      diverting attention from the real scene of the outrage. And,
      first, let me direct your notice to the date of the discovery of
      the articles. Collate this with the date of the fifth extract
      made by myself from the newspapers. You will find that the
      discovery followed, almost immediately, the urgent communications
      sent to the evening paper. These communications, although various
      and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same
      point—viz., the directing of attention to a gang as the
      perpetrators of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the
      Barrière du Roule as its scene.