Maurice LeBlanc, The Crystal Stopper

 Introduction

Opening Passage: 

 The two boats fastened to the little pier that jutted out from the garden lay rocking in its shadow. Here and there lighted windows showed through the thick mist on the margins of the lake. The Enghien Casino opposite blazed with light, though it was late in the season, the end of September. A few stars appeared through the clouds. A light breeze ruffled the surface of the water. 

 Arsène Lupin left the summer-house where he was smoking a cigar and, bending forward at the end of the pier: 

 “Growler?” he asked. “Masher?... Are you there?” 

 A man rose from each of the boats, and one of them answered: “Yes, governor.” 

 “Get ready. I hear the car coming with Gilbert and Vaucheray.” 

 He crossed the garden, walked round a house in process of construction, the scaffolding of which loomed overhead, and cautiously opened the door on the Avenue de Ceinture. He was not mistaken: a bright light flashed round the bend and a large, open motor-car drew up, whence sprang two men in great-coats, with the collars turned up, and caps. 

 It was Gilbert and Vaucheray: Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or twenty-two, with an attractive cast of features and a supple and sinewy frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair and a pale, sickly face.

Summary: Taking place in narrative time sometime before 813, The Crystal Stopper introduces us to an aspect of Lupin's extraordinary abilities that has been seen here and there in previous works, but never brought into focus: his gang. Lupin has his own extraordinary talents, of course, but it is clear that he has some sort of organization that allows him to leverage these talents in the most effective way. As the narrator at one point notes, in practical terms this cannot be large organization; it has to have a small core that is able to make use of various occasional supplementary groups that are not part of the organization itself. What we find in The Crystal Stopper is an instance in which an important part of the core organization breaks down. A robbery goes very wrong, with the result that two of Lupin's associates are arrested; in the hands of the police, they turn on each other, with the result that they will be executed for murder. Lupin has reason to think that one of the two is innocent of the murder, and, besides that, will eventually have reasons of his to try to protect the innocent man from execution (since Lupin is French, 'reasons of his own' inevitably means a beautiful woman).

Things will get stranger from here, however, as in the course of investigating Lupin finds that there is more going on than there ever seemed to be on the surface. The robbery and murder occurred at the house of Deputy Daubrecq, and Lupin finds that there is an obscure blackmailing scheme going on around Daubrecq. The blackmail for some reason is connected to a crystal stopper, which seems to be an entirely ordinary stopper for a bottle, and on obtaining Lupin finds, to his embarrassment that he, the greatest thief in France is the victim of theft -- and ends up being the victim of theft more than once. Eventually the blackmail scheme is shown to center on a blackmail list of politicians who have taken bribes related to the financial disaster of the Canal Company. But what does it have to do with the crystal stopper? Why is the crystal stopper even of any importance at all? Can Lupin uncover the truth before the execution? And even if he can, will he be able to leverage the matter so as to be able to do anything to save a man from being executed for a crime he did not commit?

It's interesting to see Lupin in the role of a detective. We've had bits and pieces, especially in 813, but this is thoroughly a mystery story, as we follow Lupin sorting clues and solving puzzles, winding through an obstacle course of lies, threats, misdirections, and misleading evidence. Several times, he finds he has to backtrack and find his trail again. The mystery itself is quite well done; the essential idea ("People do not suspect what does not appear to be hidden") is literally one of the oldest ideas in detective fiction, but is given a rather original twist here. The detective role suits Lupin very well, and a detective who works not occasionally but entirely outside the law, and is perfectly fine with committing all sorts of crimes in order to solve the case, is an interesting novelty.

Favorite Passage:  My actual favorite passage I can't give here because it gives away an essential plot twist to the mystery, of the crystal stopper. Here is a distant second:

“Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced mind, I am only the merest riff-raff.” 

 I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and I said: “So you really loved her?” 

 “I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So . . . I thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between us.... Since then....” 

 “You have forgotten her?” 

 “Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian, two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a Chinawoman to do it!”

Recommendation: Highly Recommended; it's a decent mystery story, and it's fascinating to see Lupin solving a mystery.

Dashed Off XVII

 There is a goodness that moral goodness presupposes and on which it depends.

In all habitual faith, including that in human testimony, we trust something to be so in light of the goodness of that something, the goodness of the authority saying that it is so, and the goodness of the end in light of which we trust. In divine faith, these are all divine goodness: We trust God about God in light of God as our end.

truth : knowledge :: goodness : faith

esque concepts in figurate being
the common hydrological way of thinking about electrisity as figurate being
-- when something is seen specifically as a model, we are considering separately what in figurate being are considered together.
-- the figurate being is the thing itself considered as modeled by something else
-- cf. Dennett's intentional stance and design stance, as he sometimes uses them
-- how is figurate being related to real and rational being? This will require close analysis in terms of the strict definitions

People who come to a conclusion directly, and people who come to it through resistance, often have different kinds of insights into the conclusion, and both kinds of insight are valuable for inquiry.

Knowledge prepares for understanding and understanding prepares for wisdom.

the experience of nostalgia for paradise -- i.e., a sense of nostalgia for a goodness never in our lives had

To recognize ourselves as temporal, we clock ourselves by external changes.

Elections are divisions of a population in order to turn a chaos of voices into an order.

Given a political position, an unintelligent mind will try to generalize it indiscriminately.

Both progressive and conservative forms of liberalism require kinds of responsibility that liberalism itself cannot sustain and that must be borrowed at credit from other institutions, which liberalism itself also cannot sustain.

ligeantia naturalis (->subditus natus)
ligeantia acquisita (->subditus datus = denizen)
ligeantia localis
ligeantia legalis

allegiance to person vs to office

Note that Hume uses a consensus gentium argument against social contract theory (T 3.2.8), and indeed defends such an argument as legitimate for the entire field of mroality as respects virtue or obligation.

Teleportation would be a temporal power.

"...the arts are the best Time Machine we have." CS Lewis

In the Gospels we see Jesus through the Church; we never see Jesus except through the Church.

transdoxastic identity (sometimes called 'intentional identity', although this is a more general category)

Dasein is not something one has; having occurs within Dasein.

Any easily identifiable minority who are willing to argue their positions will tend to be labeled as obnoxious or insufferable, regardless of how they actually argue -- people like minority approaches they disagree with to be quiet and timid, not to insist that other approaches are definitely wrong, and (even worse) to keep arguing the point rather than being intimidated by stock responses. Everyone tends to be like this (people with minority approaches do the same to other minority approaches), and people are often very hypocritical about it, attacking people on this basis for not backing down in the face of their own obnoxiousness or insufferability. It likewise doesn't depend on the kind of conclusion or quality of argumentation. This seems to be due to a combiantion of (1) most people lacking endurance when it comes to arguing, and therefore being put off by people having endurance in it, and (2) most people being poorly prepared for argument on matters they normally take for granted, and therefore being stressed by having to scramble to argue for what they take to be at least relatively obvious; and (3) some people wanting to be deferred to rather than argued with at length; and (4) some people beginning with disdain or contempt for the minority approach to begin with, for reasons connected to its being a minority approach. Perhaps there's also a tendency to disparage things that are seen as wasting one's time or that might become a threat if allowed to grow.

Psalm 93 is traditionally associated with Friday.
(1) Headings in LXX and Vulgate assign it to "the day before the sabbath when the earth was inhabited".
(2) Mishnah says it was sung in Temple on Friday (m. Tamid 7:4; cf. b. Rosh Hashanah 31a).

Philosophers 'engineer concepts' in much the same way that painters 'work with light'.

Ascension // coronation

The artist must often work with hypothetical aesthetic judgments.

The border between the phenomenal and the merely noumenal is necessarily fuzzy.

Insights are completed in communication, and communication sparks insights.

Human wisdom does not protect one from misunderstanding, but it often does protect one from fruitless misunderstanding.

Sophomoric imitation radiates off of great literature like heat off a powerful engine.

Epics often use similes to prevent metaphors from obscuring the flow of narrative too much.

'Major deus intus agit rem, / maius numen inest.'

aesthetic self-preservation as part of the sociality of the body

Aesthetic testimony often clarifies our own experience or gives us a reason to take a second look.

In visual arts, as in philosophy and science, one simplifies in order to complexify.

"To call out woe upon an evil generation is well enough if you count yourself as one of the generation denounced. If, however, you think of it as an older generation or your own generations minus yourself then the exercise is not so healthy. The basic Christian doctrine of original sin is the necessary corrective to an overdose of ethics, as all good theologians know." R. B. McCallum

"To train our taste is to increase our capacity for pleasure; for it enables us to enter into such a variety of experience. This indeed is the special precious power of literature." David Cecil
"A true work of art is more than just shapely. It must stir our interest and stimulate our imagination, it must be individual and significant and delightful."

marriage as love united with order

In marriage spouses are symbols of each other.

"no van todos por un camino" Teresa of Avila

instrumental goods intrinsic qua good to human life

As Christ is the Image of God, it makes sense for us to use images in prayer as symbols of Christ; as Christ is Icon, we pray using icons of the saints, who are icons of Christ.

Augustinian sign: "Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se aliquid animo ostendit." (De dial.)
"Signum...est praeter speciem quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem venire." (De doctr. chr.)

martyrdom // victory titles

To the overtender, virtuous compassion seems cold, or even cruel, and on that basis overtenderness can do grave damage, soemtimes even worse than cruelty. But even so, as a vice it is less bad, because more corrigible, than cruelty.

Some of what Aquinas identifies as integral parts of prudence seemt o be rather potential parts with a ministerial or suburbican role to prudence precisely as form of virtues.

significant-or-significate as nonexclusive transcendental disjunction

high utility: capacity to contribute to and to be incorporated into love of God

Almost all of the external problems of the Church are the result of an ongoing crisis of morale. This crisis has no signle root; it arises from a large number of separate assaults simultaneously, all of which converge toward morale-breaking. This is because the assaults, while separate, are ultimately coordianted. But the thing of note is how durable and resilient the Church has been in the face of this campaign.

The greater our virtues, the more ceaselessly they are expressed.

Virtues never expressed are imperfect virtues.

Fictionalisms almost universally underestimate the extent to which our fictions use real models.

The US Constitution very clearly does not present itself as a social compact but as an ordinance of the People of the United States.

the cosmos as a corporation under its Lord

Truth is not a genus, and is predicated of many things in many ways.

As everything resembles everything in some way, the future necessarily resembles the past.

To use change to measure change, we must think of it as completable and complete.

Rituals look back toward an initiating reason and forward toward a completion,a nd are partly structured by the lreation between the reason that initiates and the result that completes.

It makes no sense to ask whether induction is reliable because 'reliability' is an intrinsically inductive term; we define it using induction, we apply it using induction.

A correct theory of evidence will give you some notion of when you need to gather more evidence. This requires a classification of evidence into different kinds, because this is the primary way we determine whether more evidence is needed.

Given the power of the human intellect combined with the human imagination, stories of epic, cosmic, or mythic scope are unavoidable, as the kinds of tale commensurate with the human mind at its most full and expansive.

Loyalty makes all things epic.

A people as a (a) civil body (b) militia (c) market

a see as (a) a habitation (epaulis) (b) a superintendance (episkopen) (c) a place of service (topon tes diakonias) (d) a deputation, by succession, from the apostles

Catholic theology as contrapuntal, with transpositions, inversions, and harmonies on the essential Christological theme.

All human imagination has a mythology.

The People of God are both subjects and citizens.

We can read anything as a living thing, a mind, or an artifact, and these kinds of figurate being play a considerable role in our thought.

'Ora et labora' seems to be a summary of monasticism due to Dom Maur Walter from the 1880s.

The Will to Go on Learning

 ...[E]very policy which boasts too much of its "specific, clearly stated objectives, achievable by specific, clearly defined means" and which is "the essence of previous (political) experiences" can be assumed in advance to be wrong, or at least suspicious, without us having to examine its objectives and means too closely. It is mere arbitrariness, a mere effort to reshape the community according to one's own ideas and one's own image.... The proper politics however means exclusively service to the community, service to a society of free citizens; the service does not consist of the imposition and enforcement of one's own ideas about what is good for another (one can perhaps raise small children by such a method; or better, keep watch on prisoners), but rather of attentive listening and deep respect towards that which the others consider good for them.... Politics is not distillation of previous experiences, but rather the will to go on learning; it is not a prepared program but rather the search for a path in complicated and rapidly changing conditions. In my opinion politics cannot, either today or tomorrow, do without humility (for the politician to be good and also successful, more of course will be needed--acumen, good fortune, the ability to catch the right moment), without humility with regard to reality, to the dignity of our neighbors (even the worst of them), and to their opinions (even the craziest). 

 [Václav Benda, The Long Night of the Watchman, St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN: 2017) p. 202.]

Two Poem Drafts

 When the Dams All Break

Cool raindrops,
spring-like, calm summer:
joyful tears.
But tears too flowing
create raging floods,
sweeping walls,
the pouring darkness,
and more grief.
Tears of loss bring loss
when the dams all break.

The Souls in Hell

The souls in hell, they know not God;
they think God but an It,
a being thing unmanifest,
negated and unsplit.

Around the ring their thinking runs,
and evil they define
as that which makes the cosmos be
from stillness and the Mine.

Around the ring their thinking moves,
with rushing color-noise,
vorticial in their history,
unbalanced in their poise.

Epigraph from Page 100

 One idea-game I haven't played here for some years is 'Epigraph from Page 100', which aas it sounds involves gathering a possible epigraph from page 100 of any book that happens to be at hand. A possible epigraph suggests possible works to which it might be an epigraph, which is sometimes interesting. I have been thinking about this because last month I had some air conditioning work done, and ended up having to clear out a lot of books from the stairs and hallway to prevent the workmen, much less used to them than I, from always tripping on them. I haven't finished moving them back because I have been busy with other things. So I have a huge number of books hanging around my living room at the moment. The rules are: it has to be a page actually numbered 100, it has to be the first sentence on the page, and it should be more or less sensical on its own.

Andrew Willard Jones, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of Louis IX, Emmaus Academic (Steubenville, OH: 2017).

In the pursuit of the fulfillment of the "debt of royal power," Louis brought together the long-running discourse on right rulership with that on the moral life itself, and in doing so he provided a convergence between the lay and the clerical.

Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, Louis Infield, tr., Hackett Publishing Company (Indianapolis, IN: 1963).

Admitted that it is illogical to enunciate one's wishes to God, to whom all things are known, that the need to clothe one's dispositions in the sound of words is a human weakness, yet this is the means best suited to man's limitations.

Madeleine L'Engle, Many Waters, Dell Publishing (New York: 1987).

It was a relief to know that he was still on his own planet; even so, he felt lost, and far from anything familiar.

Anthony R. Lusvardi, SJ, Baptism of Desire and Christian Salvation, The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2024).

Theodore emphasizes the intention of the recipient of baptism because, as the Good Thief shows, when this intention is present, God can bring to completion the gifts the sacrament conveys.

Edith Stein, Letters to Roman Ingarden, Hugh Candler Hunt, tr., Maria Amata Neyer, OCD, ed., ICS Publications (Washington, DC: 2014).

It is so very beautiful here where everything is in bloom, and I see the beauty everywhere.

George Eliot, Romola, Penguin Books (New York: 2005).

Would any one have said that Tito had not made a rich return to his benefactor, or that his gratitude and affection would fail on any greater demand?

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Simon Armitage, tr., W. W. Norton and Company (New York: 2007). (Page 100 is the facing-page Middle English rather than the translation itself.)

And as in slomeryng he slode, sleyly he herde
A littel dyn at his dor, and derfly upon;
And he heves up his hed out of the clothes,
A corner of the cortyn he caught up a lyttel,
And waytes warly thiderwarde quat hit be myghte.

Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, Simon & Schuster (New York: 2008).

To become a member of a London guild (or livery company) you might need to pay as much as £3.

G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel's The Philosophy of Right, Alan White, tr., Focus Philosophical Library (Newburyport, MA: 2002).

One should not think badly of human beings who make their well-being their intention.

Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Michael Chase, tr., Harvard University Press (Cambridge,  MA: 1998).

Thus, the totality of human existence is situated in relation to the whole of reality.

The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain, Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams, trs., Penguin Books (New York: 2020).

There were six thousand men lined up on its ramparts
(Hard were the words exchanged with their watchman).

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Wordsworth Editions Limited (Ware, Hartfordshire: 1995).

The level of the sunlit landscape, though flat as a whole, fell away on the farther side of the wood in billows of heavy slope towards the sea, in a way not unlike the lower slope of the Sussex downs.

Being, Act, Spirit

 Pure being, which has nothing of nonbeing in itself, is in such wise eternally infinite that no nonbeing is before it or after it, and it contains in itself all that is and can be. This being is all that it is in the highest measure of being, or more correctly, it is measureless (it is very measure by which all else is to be measured) -- it is pure act. In it nothing is shut, nothing remains unfolded; it is rather in absolute openness, illumined in itself and through itself; that is, it is light itself -- it is pure spirit.

If anything is other than pure spirit, it can be only through pure spirit. Whatever is other than pure being can be set off from it only by having bounds [Einschrankung], by being something yet not everything, by being yet without being in full measure -- by being as an analogue of pure being, I mean by being like pure being yet more unlike it.

[Edith Stein, Potency and Act, Walter Redmond, tr., ICS Publications (Washington, DC: 2009), p. 413.]