It was clear to
      me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out,
      re-directed, and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and
      took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the
      table. “The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed,
      quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus
      engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard
      immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded
      by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified
      mob. D—— rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In
      the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it
      in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards
      externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my
      lodgings—imitating the D—— cipher, very readily, by means of a
      seal formed of bread. “The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic
      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 letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”

      “How? did you put any thing particular in it?”

      “Why—it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior
      blank—that would have been insulting. D——, at Vienna once, did me
      an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I
      should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in
      regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I
      thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted
      with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet
      the words—

      “‘— — Un dessein si funeste,
      S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste. They are to be found in Crébillon’s ‘Atrée.’”




THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE


Truth is stranger than fiction.—_Old Saying_

      Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
      investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work
      which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at
      all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my
      knowledge, by any American—if we except, perhaps, the author of
      the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—having had occasion, I
      say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very
      remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that
      the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error
      respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as
      that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the
      _dénouement_ there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as
      it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
      farther. For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
      inquisitive reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the
      meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I
      there discovered. It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a
      certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not
      only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the
      prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his
      dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the
      executioner. Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with
      a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit
      upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was
      interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit
      from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had
      occurred an idea. Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would
      either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty,
      or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the
      attempt. Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year
      (which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her
      father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her
      hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts—(he had intended to take
      it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day,
      only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he
      gives all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand
      vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of
      giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When,
      therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king,
      and did actually marry him despite her father’s excellent advice
      not to do any thing of the kind—when she would and did marry him,
      I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as
      thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.