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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 anything 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 week-days, 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 desecrated. With sickness of heart the wanderer will fleo back to 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 labour, 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. 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

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another, in any thicket in the immediate neighbourhood 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 attention to a gang as the perpetrators of the outrage, and to the neighbourhood 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 lato 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 one-an exceedingly singular one. It was unusually dense. Within its naturally walled inclosure were three extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool. And this thicket, so full of 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.

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But there are still other and stronger reasons for believing them so deposited than any 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 of Marie Rogêt.' Here is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not overacute person wishing to dispose of 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

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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 evidenco,' it is said, 'of a struggle; and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,' but the petticoat and 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 a nail

becoming entangled in them tears them rectangularlydivides 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 fabrics 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, whero 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

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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 unedged interior of the dress! These, I say, are things which one may well be pardoned for disbelieving; yet, taken collectively, they may 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 precaution enough to think of removing the corpse. 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

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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.

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"We will resume this question by mere allusion to the revolting details of the surgeon examined at the in quest. It is only necessary to say that his published: inferences, in regard to the number of the 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?

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"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 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.

"And again. I have already mentioned the suspi cion to be excited by the fact that the articles in question were suffered to remain at all in the thicket where

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