fect
as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses to afford
opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to
impress them with the conviction, to which G----, in fact, did finally
arrive,--the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I
felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains
in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of
policial action in searches for articles concealed,--I felt that this
whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the
Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary
nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to
see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as
open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the
gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he
would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not
deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember,
perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our
first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so
much on account of its being so very self-evident."

"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. 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 colour 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 inertiae_, 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 fi