and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite suspicion.

"At length my eyes in going the circuit of the room 5 fell upon a trumpery filigree card rack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was 10 much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two across the middle, as if a design in the first instance to tear it entirely up as worthless had been altered or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D

cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminu15 tive female hand, to D, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly and even, as it seemed, contemptuously into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was 20 to all appearance radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D- cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the Sfamily. Here the address, to the minister, was diminu25 tive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But then, the

radicalness of these differences, which was excessive, the dirt, the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the methodical habits of D: these things were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came to suspect.

5

"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and while I maintained a most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention riveted upon the letter. At length I bade the minister good morning and 10 took my departure, leaving a gold snuffbox upon the table.

"The next morning I called for the snuffbox, 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 15 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 similar one (so far as 20 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 25 fired it among a crowd of women and children, but as it proved to have been without ball, 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 5 was a man in my own pay."

"But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter? Would it not have been better at the first visit to have seized it openly and departed?"

"The minister," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man 10 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 his presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You 15 know my political prepossessions. Being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, the minister 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 awk20 ward. In the present instance I have no sympathy, at least no pity. He is an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts when he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card rack."

Dupin (dū pǎn). minister a government official. nearness. hotel in French usage, a large mansion. worth about twenty cents.

prepossessions: inclinations.

juxtaposition: franc: a coin

TO HELEN

EDGAR ALLAN POE

NOTE. This poem was written by Poe, when he was a lonely boy of fourteen, to the mother of one of his schoolmates.

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicæan barks of yore,.
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy Land!

Nicæ'an this reference is not clear. If the "weary wanderer" is Ulysses, the barks which bore him homeward should have been Phæacian, to agree with Homer's story. hyacinth: curling; suggesting a hyacinth. -Naiad: a graceful water nymph. - Psyche (si'ké): a lovely maiden whom Cupid wedded. See the story of Psyche (Gayley's Classic Myths) for the allusion to the lamp. Psyche is the Greek word for "soul.”

15

HATTO THE HERMIT

SELMA LAGERLÖF

SELMA LAGERLÖF (lä ́ger lẽf) is a Swedish novelist who is held in high esteem by literary critics.

Hatto the Hermit stood in the desert and prayed to God. The wind blew his long hair and beard about him 5 as it blows the grass and vines about an old ruin. But he did not brush back the hair from his eyes, nor did he fasten his long beard with his girdle, for his gaunt arms were upraised to heaven. Since sunrise he had held them outstretched, as untiring as a tree holding out its boughs, 10 and thus he would remain until evening. Every day would find him in the same place. It was a great thing for which he was praying.

He was a man who had suffered much from the injustice and dishonesty of the world about him. Therefore 15 had he come into the wilderness, and made for himself a cave by the river bank, and prayed to God to punish mankind with flood and pestilence and death.

Round about him was the wilderness, bare and desolate. But a little farther up the bank stood an old pollard 20 willow, from the top of which fresh green branches were growing. On stormy days the flexible twigs whipped about the willow trunk as hair and beard whipped about Hatto the Hermit.