Page:Mystery Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.pdf/120
rise upon corroboration, and the murderer will be traced."
[For reasons which well shall not specify, but which to many readers will appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here omitting, from the MSS. placed in our hands, such portionas details the following up of the apparently slight clue obtained by Dupin. We feel it advisable only to state, in brief, that the result desired was brought to pass; and that the Prefect fullfilled punctually, although with reluctance, the terms of his compact with the Chevalier. Mr. Poe's article concludes with the following words.—Eds[1].]
It will be understood that I speak of coincidences and no more. What I have said above upon this topic must suffice. In my own heart there dwells no faith in preternature. That nature and its God are two, no man who thinks will deny. That the latter, creating the former, can at will control or modify it, is also unquestionable. I say "at will"; for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned the embrace all contingencies which could lie in the Future. With God all is Now.
I repeat, then, that I speak of htese things only as coincidences. And further: in what I relate it will be seen that between the fate of the unhappy Mary Cecilia Rogers, so far as that fate is known, and the fate of one Marie Rogêt up to a certain epoch in her history, there has existed a parallel in the contemplation of whose wonderful exactitiude the reason becomes embarrassed. I say all this will be seen. But let it not for a moment be supposed that, in proceeding with
- ↑ Of the magazine in which the article was originally published.—Ed.