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[For reasons which we shall not specify, but which to many readers will
appear obvious, we have taken the liberty of here omitting, from the
MSS. placed in our hands, such portion as details the following up of
the apparently slight clew obtained by Dupin. We feel it advisable only
to state, in brief, that the result desired was brought to pass; and
that the Prefect fulfilled punctually, although with reluctance, the
terms of his compact with the Chevalier. Mr. Poe's article concludes
with the following words.--Eds. (*23)]
It will be understood that I speak of coincidences and no more. What
I have said above upon this topic must suffice. In my own heart there
dwells no faith in præter-nature. That Nature and its God are two, no
man who thinks, will deny. That the latter, creating the former, can, at
will, control or modify it, is also unquestionable. I say "at will;" for
the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed,
of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we
insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their
origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which
could lie in the Future. With God all is Now.
I repeat, then, that I speak of these things only as of coincidences.
And farther: in what I relate it will be seen that between the fate of
the unhappy Mary Cecilia Rogers, so far as that fate is known, and the
fate of one Marie Rogêt up to a certain epoch in her history, there has
existed a parallel in the contemplation of whose wonderful exactitude
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