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these numerous modes and motives could have been the actual one, they
have taken it for granted that one of them must. But the case with which
these variable fancies were entertained, and the very plausibility which
each assumed, should have been understood as indicative rather of the
difficulties than of the facilities which must attend elucidation. I
have before observed that it is by prominences above the plane of the
ordinary, that reason feels her way, if at all, in her search for the
true, and that the proper question in cases such as this, is not so
much 'what has occurred?' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred
before?' In the investigations at the house of Madame L'Espanaye,
(*14) the agents of G---- were discouraged and confounded by that
very unusualness which, to a properly regulated intellect, would have
afforded the surest omen of success; while this same intellect might
have been plunged in despair at the ordinary character of all that met
the eye in the case of the perfumery-girl, and yet told of nothing but
easy triumph to the functionaries of the Prefecture.
"
In the case of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter there was, even
at the beginning of our investigation, no doubt that murder had been
committed. The idea of suicide was excluded at once. Here, too, we are
freed, at the commencement, from all supposition of self-murder. The
body found at the Barrière du Roule, was found under such circumstances
as to leave us no room for embarrassment upon this important point. But
it has been suggested that the corpse discovered, is not that of the
Marie Rogêt for the conviction of whose assassin, or assassins, the
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