f best
preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.

"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating
ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must always have been
at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive
evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the
limits of that dignitary's ordinary search--the more satisfied I
became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the
comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at
all.

"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles,
and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial
hotel. I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual,
and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps,
the most really energetic human being now alive--but that is only when
nobody sees him.

"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the
necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and
thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only
upon the conversation of my host.

"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat,
and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other
papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here,
however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to
excite particular suspicion.

"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a
trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a
dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of
the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments,
were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last
was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the
middle--as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up
as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a
large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very conspicuously, and was
addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the minister, himself.
It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into
one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be
that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance,
radically different from the one of whi