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Xerxes et id genus omne."
"The fruiterer!--you astonish me--I know no fruiterer whomsoever."
"The man who ran up against you as we entered the street--it may have
been fifteen minutes ago."
I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a
large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we
passed from the Rue C ---- into the thoroughfare where we stood; but
what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.
There was not a particle of charlâtanerie about Dupin. "I will
explain," he said, "and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will
first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which
I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in
question. The larger links of the chain run thus--Chantilly, Orion, Dr.
Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer."
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives,
amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions
of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of
interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by
the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the
starting-point and the goal. What, then, must have been my amazement
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