To commence,
I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of
Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the
help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience
of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always
seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this
woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace.
In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in
this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou
shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the
ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central
ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the
mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and
is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the
sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of
my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have
surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I
have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a
Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan.
In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my
place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable
papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her
advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells,
greedy to obtain the benefice.
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