sented
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. It was clear to me that the letter
had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected and resealed. 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
behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women
and children. It proved, however, to have been without a 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 afterward 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