Золотой жук / The Gold-bug

The Minister decamped, leaving his own letter – one of no importance – upon the table.»

«Here, then,» said Dupin to me, «you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendency complete – the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber.»

«Yes,» replied the Prefect; «and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done openly.

«Than whom,» said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, «no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined.»

«You flatter me,» replied the Prefect; «but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained.»

«It is clear,» said I, «as you observe, that the letter is still in the possession of the Minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power.

«True,» said G.; «and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the Minister’s hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect our design.»

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notes

Примечания

1

В состоянии агонии (лат).

2

Судебная библиотека (лат.

3

Note. – The «MS. Found in a Bottle» was originally published in 1831; and it was not until many years afterwards that I became acquainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels of the earth; the Pole itself being represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height. (Author’s note)

4

Примечание.