an equal number of personal rencounters would be made. For my own
part, I should hold it not only as possible, but as very far more than
probable, that Marie might have proceeded, at any given period, by any
one of the many routes between her own residence and that of her aunt,
without meeting a single individual whom she knew, or by whom she was
known. In viewing this question in its full and proper light, we must
hold steadily in mind the great disproportion between the personal
acquaintances of even the most noted individual in Paris, and the entire
population of Paris itself.
“But whatever force there may still appear to be in the suggestion of Le
Commerciel, will be much diminished when we take into consideration the
hour at which the girl went abroad. ‘It was when the streets were full
of people,’ says Le Commerciel, ‘that she went out.’ But not so. It was
at nine o’clock in the morning. Now at nine o’clock of every morning in
the week, with the exception of Sunday, the streets of the city are,
it is true, thronged with people. At nine on Sunday, the populace are
chiefly within doors preparing for church. No observing person can
have failed to notice the peculiarly deserted air of the town, from
about eight until ten on the morning of every Sabbath. Between ten and
eleven the streets are thronged, but not at so early a period as that
designated.
“There is another point at which there seems a deficiency of observation
on the part of Le Commerciel. ‘A piece,’ it says, ‘of one of the
unfortunate girl’s petticoats, two feet long, and one foot wide, was
torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head,
probably to prevent screams. This was done, by fellows who had no
pocket-handkerchiefs.’ Whether this idea is, or is not well founded,
we will endeavor to see hereafter; but by ‘fellows who have no
pocket-handkerchiefs’ the editor intends the lowest class of ruffians.
These, however, are the very description of people who will always be
found to have handkerchiefs even when destitute of shirts. You must have
had occasion to observe how absolutely indispensable, of late years, to
the thorough blackguard, has become the pocket-handkerchief.”
“And what are we to think,” I asked, “of the article in Le Soleil?”
“That it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrot--in which
case he would have been the most illustrious parrot of his race. He has
merely repeated the individual items of the already published opinion;
collecting them, with a laudable industry, from this paper and from
that. ‘The things had all evidently been there,’ he says, ‘at least,
three or four weeks, and there can be no doubt that the spot of this
appalling outrage has been discovered.’ The facts here re-stated by
Le Soleil, are very far indeed from removing my own doubts upon this
subject, and we will examine them more particularly hereafter in
connexion with another division of the theme.
“At present we must occupy ourselves with other investigations. You
cannot fail to have remarked the extreme laxity of the examination of
the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily determined,
or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had
the body been in any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles
of jewelry about her person upon leaving home? if so, had she any when
found? These are important questions utterly untouched by the evidence;
and there are others of equal moment, which have met with no attention.
We must endeavor to satisfy ourselves by personal inquiry. The case of
St. Eustache must be re-examined. I have no suspicion of this person;
but let us proceed methodically. We will ascertain beyond a doubt the
validity of the affidavits in regard to his whereabouts on the Sunday.
Affidavits of this character are readily made matter of mystification.
Should there be nothing wrong here, however, we will dismiss St.
Eustache from our investigations. His suicide, however corroborative of
suspicion, were there found to be deceit in the affidavits, is, without
such deceit, in no respect an unaccountable circumstance, or one which
need cause us to deflect from the line of ordinary analysis.
“In that which I now propose, we will discard the interior points of
this tragedy, and concentrate our attention upon its outskirts. Not the
least usual error, in investigations such as this, is the limiting of
inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or
circumstantial events. It is the mal-practice of the courts to confine
evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet
experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a
vast, perhaps the larger portion of truth, arises from the seemingly
irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely
through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon
the unforeseen. But perhaps you do not comprehend me. The history of
human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or
incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous
and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary,
in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the
largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite
out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical
to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is
admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a matter of
absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the
mathematical formulae of the schools.
“I repeat that it is no more than fact, that the larger portion of all
truth has sprung from the collateral; and it is but in accordance with
the spirit of the principle involved in this fact, that I would divert
inquiry, in the present case, from the trodden and hitherto unfruitful
ground of the event itself, to the contemporary circumstances which
surround it. While you ascertain the validity of the affidavits, I will
examine the newspapers more generally than you have as yet done. So far,
we have only reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be
strange indeed if a comprehensive survey, such as I propose, of the
public prints, will not afford us some minute points which shall
establish a direction for inquiry.”
In pursuance of Dupin’s suggestion, I made scrupulous examination of
the affair of the affidavits. The result was a firm conviction of their
validity, and of the consequent innocence of St. Eustache. In the mean
time my friend occupied himself, with what seemed to me a minuteness
altogether objectless, in a scrutiny of the various newspaper files. At
the end of a week he placed before me the following extracts:
“About three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to the
present, was caused by the disappearance of this same Marie Rogêt, from
the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc, in the Palais Royal. At the end of
a week, however, she re-appeared at her customary comptoir, as well as
ever, with the exception of a slight paleness not altogether usual. It
was given out by Monsieur Le Blanc and her mother, that she had merely
been on a visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was
speedily hushed up. We presume that the present absence is a freak of
the same nature, and that, at the expiration of a week, or perhaps of
a month, we shall have her among us again.”--Evening Paper--Monday June
23. (*17)
“An evening journal of yesterday, refers to a former mysterious
disappearance of Mademoiselle Rogêt. It is well known that, during the
week of her absence from Le Blanc’s parfumerie, she was in the company
of a young naval officer, much noted for his debaucheries. A quarrel, it
is supposed, providentially led to her return home. We have the name of
the Lothario in question, who is, at present, stationed in Paris, but,
for obvious reasons, forbear to make it public.”--Le Mercurie--Tuesday
Morning, June 24. (*18)
“An outrage of the most atrocious character was perpetrated near this
city the day before yesterday. A gentleman, with his wife and daughter,
engaged, about dusk, the services of six young men, who were idly rowing
a boat to and fro near the banks of the Seine, to convey him across the
river. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the three passengers stepped
out, and had proceeded so far as to be beyond the view of the boat,
when the daughter discovered that she had left in it her parasol. She
returned for it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream,
gagged, brutally treated, and finally taken to the shore at a point
not far from that at which she had originally entered the boat with her
parents. The villains have escaped for the time, but the police are upon
their trail, and some of them will soon be taken.”--Morning Paper--June
25. (*19)
“We have received one or two communications, the object of which is to
fasten the crime of the late atrocity upon Mennais; (*20) but as this
gentleman has been fully exonerated by a loyal inquiry, and as the
arguments of our several correspondents appear to be more zealous than
profound, we do not think it advisable to make them public.”--Morning
Paper--June 28. (*21)
“We have received several forcibly written communications, apparently
from various sources, and which go far to render it a matter of
certainty that the unfortunate Marie Rogêt has become a victim of one of
the numerous bands of blackguards which infest the vicinity of the city
upon Sunday. Our own opinion is decidedly in favor of this
supposition. We shall endeavor to make room for some of these arguments
hereafter.”--Evening Paper--Tuesday, June 31. (*22)
“On Monday, one of the bargemen connected with the revenue service, saw
a empty boat floating down the Seine. Sails were lying in the bottom of
the boat. The bargeman towed it under the barge office. The next morning
it was taken from thence, without the knowledge of any of the officers.
The rudder is now at the barge office.”--Le Diligence--Thursday, June
26.
Upon reading these various extracts, they not only seemed to me
irrelevant, but I could perceive no mode in which any one of them
could be brought to bear upon the matter in hand. I waited for some
explanation from Dupin.
“It is not my present design,” he said, “to dwell upon the first and
second of those extracts. I have copied them chiefly to show you the
extreme remissness of the police, who, as far as I can understand from
the Prefect, have not troubled themselves, in any respect, with an
examination of the naval officer alluded to. Yet it is mere folly to say
that between the first and second disappearance of Marie, there is
no supposable connection. Let us admit the first elopement to have
resulted in a quarrel between the lovers, and the return home of the
betrayed. We are now prepared to view a second elopement (if we know
that an elopement has again taken place) as indicating a renewal of the
betrayer’s advances, rather than as the result of new proposals by a
second individual--we are prepared to regard it as a ‘making up’ of the
old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new one. The chances are
ten to one, that he who had once eloped with Marie, would again propose
an elopement, rather than that she to whom proposals of elopement had
been made by one individual, should have them made to her by another.
And here let me call your attention to the fact, that the time elapsing
between the first ascertained, and the second supposed elopement, is
a few months more than the general period of the cruises of our
men-of-war. Had the lover been interrupted in his first villany by the
necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first moment of his
return to renew the base designs not yet altogether accomplished--or
not yet altogether accomplished by him? Of all these things we know
nothing.
“You will say, however, that, in the second instance, there was no
elopement as imagined. Certainly not--but are we prepared to say that
there was not the frustrated design? Beyond St. Eustache, and perhaps
Beauvais, we find no recognized, no open, no honorable suitors of Marie.
Of none other is there any thing said. Who, then, is the secret lover,
of whom the relatives (at least most of them) know nothing, but whom
Marie meets upon the morning of Sunday, and who is so deeply in her
confidence, that she hesitates not to remain with him until the shades
of the evening descend, amid the solitary groves of the Barrière du
Roule? Who is that secret lover, I ask, of whom, at least, most of the
relatives know nothing? And what means the singular prophecy of Madame
Rogêt on the morning of Marie’s departure?--‘I fear that I shall never
see Marie again.’
“But if we cannot imagine Madame Rogêt privy to the design of elopement,
may we not at least suppose this design entertained by the girl? Upon
quitting home, she gave it to be understood that she was about to visit
her aunt in the Rue des Drômes and St. Eustache was requested to call
for her at dark. Now, at first glance, this fact strongly militates
against my suggestion;--but let us reflect. That she did meet some
companion, and proceed with him across the river, reaching the Barrière
du Roule at so late an hour as three o’clock in the afternoon, is
known. But in consenting so to accompany this individual, (for whatever
purpose--to her mother known or unknown,) she must have thought of her
expressed intention when leaving home, and of the surprise and suspicion
aroused in the bosom of her affianced suitor, St. Eustache, when,
calling for her, at the hour appointed, in the Rue des Drômes, he should
find that she had not been there, and when, moreover, upon returning to
the pension with this alarming intelligence, he should become aware of
her continued absence from home. She must have thought of these things,
I say. She must have foreseen the chagrin of St. Eustache, the suspicion
of all. She could not have thought of returning to brave this suspicion;
but the suspicion becomes a point of trivial importance to her, if we
suppose her not intending to return.
“We may imagine her thinking thus--‘I am to meet a certain person for
the purpose of elopement, or for certain other purposes known only to
myself. It is necessary that there be no chance of interruption--there
must be sufficient time given us to elude pursuit--I will give it to be
understood that I shall visit and spend the day with my aunt at the Rue
des Drômes--I well tell St. Eustache not to call for me until dark--in
this way, my absence from home for the longest possible period, without
causing suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and I shall gain
more time than in any other manner. If I bid St. Eustache call for me
at dark, he will be sure not to call before; but, if I wholly neglect
to bid him call, my time for escape will be diminished, since it will
be expected that I return the earlier, and my absence will the sooner
excite anxiety. Now, if it were my design to return at all--if I had in
contemplation merely a stroll with the individual in question--it would
not be my policy to bid St. Eustache call; for, calling, he will be sure
to ascertain that I have played him false--a fact of which I might keep
him for ever in ignorance, by leaving home without notifying him of my
intention, by returning before dark, and by then stating that I had been
to visit my aunt in the Rue des Drômes. But, as it is my design never
to return--or not for some weeks--or not until certain concealments are
effected--the gaining of time is the only point about which I need give
myself any concern.’
“You have observed, in your notes, that the most general opinion in
relation to this sad affair is, and was from the first, that the girl
had been the victim of a gang of blackguards. Now, the popular opinion,
under certain conditions, is not to be disregarded. When arising of
itself--when manifesting itself in a strictly spontaneous manner--we
should look upon it as analogous with that intuition which is the
idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. In ninety-nine cases from
the hundred I would abide by its decision. But it is important that we
find no palpable traces of suggestion. The opinion must be rigorously
the public’s own; and the distinction is often exceedingly difficult
to perceive and to maintain. In the present instance, it appears to me
that this ‘public opinion’ in respect to a gang, has been superinduced
by the collateral event which is detailed in the third of my extracts.
All Paris is excited by the discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young,
beautiful and notorious. This corpse is found, bearing marks of
violence, and floating in the river. But it is now made known that, at
the very period, or about the very period, in which it is supposed that
the girl was assassinated, an outrage similar in nature to that endured
by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetuated, by a gang
of young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. Is it
wonderful that the one known atrocity should influence the popular
judgment in regard to the other unknown? This judgment awaited
direction, and the known outrage seemed so opportunely to afford it!
Marie, too, was found in the river; and upon this very river was this
known outrage committed. The connexion of the two events had about it so
much of the palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure
of the populace to appreciate and to seize it. But, in fact, the one
atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing, evidence that the
other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed.
It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were
perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheard-of wrong, there should
have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same
city, under the same circumstances, with the same means and appliances,
engaged in a wrong of precisely the same aspect, at precisely the
same period of time! Yet in what, if not in this marvellous train of
coincidence, does the accidentally suggested opinion of the populace
call upon us to believe?
“Before proceeding farther, let us consider the supposed scene of the
assassination, in the thicket at the Barrière du Roule. This thicket,
although dense, was in the close vicinity of a public road. Within
were three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat with a back and
footstool. On the upper stone was discovered a white petticoat; on the
second, a silk scarf. A parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief,
were also here found. The handkerchief bore the name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’
Fragments of dress were seen on the branches around. The earth was
trampled, the bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a
violent struggle.
“Notwithstanding the acclamation with which the discovery of this
thicket was received by the press, and the unanimity with which it
was supposed to indicate the precise scene of the outrage, it must be
admitted that there was some very good reason for doubt. That it was the
scene, I may or I may not believe--but there was excellent reason for
doubt. Had the true scene been, as Le Commerciel suggested, in the
neighborhood of the Rue Pavée St. Andrée, the perpetrators of the
crime, supposing them still resident in Paris, would naturally have been
stricken with terror at the public attention thus acutely directed into
the proper channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there would have
arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to redivert
this attention. And thus, the thicket of the Barrière du Roule having
been already suspected, the idea of placing the articles where they were
found, might have been naturally entertained. There is no real evidence,
although Le Soleil so supposes, that the articles discovered had
been more than a very few days in the thicket; while there is much
circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without
attracting attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal
Sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. ‘They
were all mildewed down hard,’ says Le Soleil, adopting the opinions of
its predecessors, ‘with the action of the rain, and stuck together from
mildew. The grass had grown around and over some of them. The silk of
the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together within.
The upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed
and rotten, and tore on being opened.’ In respect to the grass having
‘grown around and over some of them,’ it is obvious that the fact
could only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the
recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the articles
and took them home before they had been seen by a third party. But grass
will grow, especially in warm and damp weather, (such as was that of the
period of the murder,) as much as two or three inches in a single day.
A parasol lying upon a newly turfed ground, might, in a single week,
be entirely concealed from sight by the upspringing grass. And touching
that mildew upon which the editor of Le Soleil so pertinaciously
insists, that he employs the word no less than three times in the
brief paragraph just quoted, is he really unaware of the nature of this
mildew? Is he to be told that it is one of the many classes of fungus,
of which the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence
within twenty-four hours?
“Thus we see, at a glance, that what has been most triumphantly adduced
in support of the idea that the articles had been ‘for at least three
or four weeks’ in the thicket, is most absurdly null as regards any
evidence of that fact. On the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult
to believe that these articles could have remained in the thicket
specified, for a longer period than a single week--for a longer period
than from one Sunday to the next. Those who know any thing of the
vicinity of Paris, know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion
unless at a great distance from its suburbs. Such a thing as an
unexplored, or even an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or
groves, is not for a moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at
heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the dust and heat
of this great metropolis--let any such one attempt, even during the
weekdays, to slake his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of natural
loveliness which immediately surround us. At every second step, he will
find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and personal intrusion
of some ruffian or party of carousing blackguards. He will seek privacy
amid the densest foliage, all in vain. Here are the very nooks where the
unwashed most abound--here are the temples most desecrate. With sickness
of the heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted Paris as to
a less odious because less incongruous sink of pollution. But if the
vicinity of the city is so beset during the working days of the week,
how much more so on the Sabbath! It is now especially that, released
from the claims of labor, or deprived of the customary opportunities of
crime, the town blackguard seeks the precincts of the town, not through
love of the rural, which in his heart he despises, but by way of escape
from the restraints and conventionalities of society. He desires
less the fresh air and the green trees, than the utter license of the
country. Here, at the road-side inn, or beneath the foliage of the
woods, he indulges, unchecked by any eye except those of his boon
companions, in all the mad excess of a counterfeit hilarity--the joint
offspring of liberty and of rum. I say nothing more than what must
be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when I repeat that the
circumstance of the articles in question having remained undiscovered,
for a longer period--than from one Sunday to another, in any thicket in
the immediate neighborhood of Paris, is to be looked upon as little less
than miraculous.
“But there are not wanting other grounds for the suspicion that the
articles were placed in the thicket with the view of diverting attention
from the real scene of the outrage. And, first, let me direct your
notice to the date of the discovery of the articles. Collate this with
the date of the fifth extract made by myself from the newspapers. You
will find that the discovery followed, almost immediately, the urgent
communications sent to the evening paper. These communications, although
various and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same
point--viz., the directing of attention to a gang as the perpetrators
of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the Barrière du Roule as its
scene. Now here, of course, the suspicion is not that, in consequence of
these communications, or of the public attention by them directed, the
articles were found by the boys; but the suspicion might and may well
have been, that the articles were not before found by the boys, for the
reason that the articles had not before been in the thicket; having
been deposited there only at so late a period as at the date, or shortly
prior to the date of the communications by the guilty authors of these
communications themselves.
“This thicket was a singular--an exceedingly singular one. It was
unusually dense. Within its naturally walled enclosure were three
extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool. And this
thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within
a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the
habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of
the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager--a wager of one
thousand to one--that a day never passed over the heads of these boys
without finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall,
and enthroned upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such
a wager, have either never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the
boyish nature. I repeat--it is exceedingly hard to comprehend how the
articles could have remained in this thicket undiscovered, for a longer
period than one or two days; and that thus there is good ground for
suspicion, in spite of the dogmatic ignorance of Le Soleil, that they
were, at a comparatively late date, deposited where found.
“But there are still other and stronger reasons for believing them so
deposited, than any which I have as yet urged. And, now, let me beg
your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles. On the
upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf; scattered
around, were a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the
name, ‘Marie Rogêt.’ Here is just such an arrangement as would naturally
be made by a not over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles
naturally. But it is by no means a really natural arrangement. I
should rather have looked to see the things all lying on the ground and
trampled under foot. In the narrow limits of that bower, it would have
been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should have retained
a position upon the stones, when subjected to the brushing to and fro
of many struggling persons. ‘There was evidence,’ it is said, ‘of a
struggle; and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,’--but the
petticoat and the scarf are found deposited as if upon shelves. ‘The
pieces of the frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide
and six inches long. One part was the hem of the frock and it had been
mended. They looked like strips torn off.’ Here, inadvertently, Le
Soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase. The pieces, as
described, do indeed ‘look like strips torn off;’ but purposely and by
hand. It is one of the rarest of accidents that a piece is ‘torn off,’
from any garment such as is now in question, by the agency of a thorn.
From the very nature of such fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming entangled
in them, tears them rectangularly--divides them into two longitudinal
rents, at right angles with each other, and meeting at an apex where the
thorn enters--but it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece ‘torn
off.’ I never so knew it, nor did you. To tear a piece off from such
fabric, two distinct forces, in different directions, will be, in almost
every case, required. If there be two edges to the fabric--if, for
example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is desired to tear from it
a slip, then, and then only, will the one force serve the purpose. But
in the present case the question is of a dress, presenting but one edge.
To tear a piece from the interior, where no edge is presented, could
only be effected by a miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one
thorn could accomplish it. But, even where an edge is presented, two
thorns will be necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions,
and the other in one. And this in the supposition that the edge is
unhemmed. If hemmed, the matter is nearly out of the question. We thus
see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces being ‘torn
off’ through the simple agency of ‘thorns;’ yet we are required to
believe not only that one piece but that many have been so torn. ‘And
one part,’ too, ‘was the hem of the frock!’ Another piece was ‘part
of the skirt, not the hem,’--that is to say, was torn completely out
through the agency of thorns, from the uncaged interior of the
dress! These, I say, are things which one may well be pardoned for
disbelieving; yet, taken collectedly, they form, perhaps, less of
reasonable ground for suspicion, than the one startling circumstance of
the articles’ having been left in this thicket at all, by any murderers
who had enough precaution to think of removing the corpse. You will not
have apprehended me rightly, however, if you suppose it my design to
deny this thicket as the scene of the outrage. There might have been a
wrong here, or, more possibly, an accident at Madame Deluc’s. But, in
fact, this is a point of minor importance. We are not engaged in an
attempt to discover the scene, but to produce the perpetrators of the
murder. What I have adduced, notwithstanding the minuteness with which I
have adduced it, has been with the view, first, to show the folly of the
positive and headlong assertions of Le Soleil, but secondly and chiefly,
to bring you, by the most natural route, to a further contemplation of
the doubt whether this assassination has, or has not been, the work of a
gang.
“We will resume this question by mere allusion to the revolting details
of the surgeon examined at the inquest. It is only necessary to say that
his published inferences, in regard to the number of ruffians, have been
properly ridiculed as unjust and totally baseless, by all the reputable
anatomists of Paris. Not that the matter might not have been as
inferred, but that there was no ground for the inference:--was there not
much for another?
“Let us reflect now upon ‘the traces of a struggle;’ and let me ask what
these traces have been supposed to demonstrate. A gang. But do they not
rather demonstrate the absence of a gang? What struggle could have taken
place--what struggle so violent and so enduring as to have left its
‘traces’ in all directions--between a weak and defenceless girl and the
gang of ruffians imagined? The silent grasp of a few rough arms and all
would have been over. The victim must have been absolutely passive at
their will. You will here bear in mind that the arguments urged against
the thicket as the scene, are applicable in chief part, only against it
as the scene of an outrage committed by more than a single individual.
If we imagine but one violator, we can conceive, and thus only conceive,
the struggle of so violent and so obstinate a nature as to have left the
‘traces’ apparent.
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