“I repeat that it is no more than fact, that the larger portion
      of all truth has sprung from the collateral; and it is but in
      accordance with the spirit of the principle involved in this
      fact, that I would divert inquiry, in the present case, from the
      trodden and hitherto unfruitful ground of the event itself, to
      the contemporary circumstances which surround it. While you
      ascertain the validity of the affidavits, I will examine the
      newspapers more generally than you have as yet done. So far, we
      have only reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be
      strange indeed if a comprehensive survey, such as I propose, of
      the public prints, will not afford us some minute points which
      shall establish a direction for inquiry.”

      In pursuance of Dupin’s suggestion, I made scrupulous examination
      of the affair of the affidavits. The result was a firm conviction
      of their validity, and of the consequent innocence of St.
      Eustache. In the mean time my friend occupied himself, with what
      seemed to me a minuteness altogether objectless, in a scrutiny of
      the various newspaper files. At the end of a week he placed
      before me the following extracts:

      “About three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to
      the present, was caused by the disappearance of this same Marie
      Rogêt, from the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc, in the Palais
      Royal. At the end of a week, however, she re-appeared at her
      customary comptoir, as well as ever, with the exception of a
      slight paleness not altogether usual. It was given out by
      Monsieur Le Blanc and her mother, that she had merely been on a
      visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was speedily
      hushed up. We presume that the present absence is a freak of the
      same nature, and that, at the expiration of a week, or perhaps of
      a month, we shall have her among us again.”—Evening Paper—Monday,
      June 23. (*17)

      “An evening journal of yesterday, refers to a former mysterious
      disappearance of Mademoiselle Rogêt. It is well known that,
      during the week of her absence from Le Blanc’s parfumerie, she
      was in the company of a young naval officer, much noted for his
      debaucheries. A quarrel, it is supposed, providentially led to
      her return home. We have the name of the Lothario in question,
      who is, at present, stationed in Paris, but, for obvious reasons,
      forbear to make it public.”—Le Mercurie—Tuesday Morning, June 24. (*18)

      “An outrage of the most atrocious character was perpetrated near
      this city the day before yesterday. A gentleman, with his wife
      and daughter, engaged, about dusk, the services of six young men,
      who were idly rowing a boat to and fro near the banks of the
      Seine, to convey him across the river. Upon reaching the opposite
      shore, the three passengers stepped out, and had proceeded so far
      as to be beyond the view of the boat, when the daughter
      discovered that she had left in it her parasol. She returned for
      it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream, gagged,
      brutally treated, and finally taken to the shore at a point not
      far from that at which she had originally entered the boat with
      her parents. The villains have escaped for the time, but the
      police are upon their trail, and some of them will soon be
      taken.”—Morning Paper—June 25. (*19)

      “We have received one or two communications, the object of which
      is to fasten the crime of the late atrocity upon Mennais; (*20)
      but as this gentleman has been fully exonerated by a loyal
      inquiry, and as the arguments of our several correspondents
      appear to be more zealous than profound, we do not think it
      advisable to make them public.”—Morning Paper—June 28. (*21)

      “We have received several forcibly written communications,
      apparently from various sources, and which go far to render it a
      matter of certainty that the unfortunate Marie Rogêt has become a
      victim of one of the numerous bands of blackguards which infest
      the vicinity of the city upon Sunday. Our own opinion is
      decidedly in favor of this supposition. We shall endeavor to make
      room for some of these arguments hereafter.”—Evening
      Paper—Tuesday, June 31. (*22)

      “On Monday, one of the bargemen connected with the revenue
      service, saw an empty boat floating down the Seine. Sails were
      lying in the bottom of the boat. The bargeman towed it under the
      barge office. The next morning it was taken from thence, without
      the knowledge of any of the officers. The rudder is now at the
      barge office.”—Le Diligence—Thursday, June 26. Upon reading these various extracts, they not only seemed to me
      irrelevant, but I could perceive no mode in which any one of them
      could be brought to bear upon the matter in hand. I waited for
      some explanation from Dupin. “It is not my present design,” he said, “to dwell upon the first
      and second of those extracts. I have copied them chiefly to show
      you the extreme remissness of the police, who, as far as I can
      understand from the Prefect, have not troubled themselves, in any
      respect, with an examination of the naval officer alluded to. Yet
      it is mere folly to say that between the first and second
      disappearance of Marie there is no _supposable_ connection. Let
      us admit the first elopement to have resulted in a quarrel
      between the lovers, and the return home of the betrayed. We are
      now prepared to view a second elopement (if we know that an
      elopement has again taken place) as indicating a renewal of the
      betrayer’s advances, rather than as the result of new proposals
      by a second individual—we are prepared to regard it as a ‘making
      up’ of the old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new
      one. The chances are ten to one, that he who had once eloped with
      Marie, would again propose an elopement, rather than that she to
      whom proposals of elopement had been made by one individual,
      should have them made to her by another. And here let me call
      your attention to the fact, that the time elapsing between the
      first ascertained, and the second supposed elopement, is a few
      months more than the general period of the cruises of our
      men-of-war. Had the lover been interrupted in his first villany
      by the necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first
      moment of his return to renew the base designs not yet altogether
      accomplished—or not yet altogether accomplished by _him?_ Of all
      these things we know nothing. “You will say, however, that, in the second instance, there was
      no elopement as imagined.