Maurice LeBlanc, The Confessions of Arsene Lupin

 Introduction

Opening Passage: From "Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!...", the first story in the collection:

"Lupin," I said, "tell me something about yourself."

"Why, what would you have me tell you? Everybody knows my life!" replied Lupin, who lay drowsing on the sofa in my study.

"Nobody knows it!" I protested. "People know from your letters in the newspapers that you were mixed up in this case, that you started that case. But the part which you played in it all, the plain facts of the story, the upshot of the mystery: these are things of which they know nothing." (p. 1)

Summary: The ten stories in this collection are a mixed group, very different from one to another. However, they focus on aspects of Lupin's character that tend to go beyond his mere master-thievery, although we do, of course, get some of that. A significant, and unsurprising one, is Lupin's major strength and weakness, namely, beautiful women. This comes up in "The Wedding-Ring", "The Infernal Trap", and "Edith Swan-Neck". In several, Lupin plays the detective, sometimes to further a theft (as in "The Red Silk Scarf" or "The Invisible Prisoner") and sometimes to prove a point (as in "A Tragedy in the Forest of Morgues"). In all of them, things are not precisely what things seem.

A common, although not universal, thread through the stories is the use of this idea, that things are different from what they appear to be, as a sort of joke or topsy-turviness. In the case of "A Tragedy in the Forest of Morgues", the central joke is actually a pun, since the story is an homage of sorts to Edgar Allan Poe's classic and genre-defining detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", which it combines with a deliberate subversion of a common expectation in detective fiction, that the solutions to detective fictions stories are not supposed to repeat, and the upside-down insistence by Lupin, inconsistent with the thinking of so many stories in detective fiction, that extraordinary effects require extraordinary causes. Perhaps Lupin is so insistent on the matter because so many of his own effects are out of the ordinary. We get the same sort of subversiveness in Lupin's insistence in "Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!...", found in less bald form in other stories in the book, that those staples of detective fiction, rigorous deduction and close observation, don't actually matter much for solving mysteries; what matters instead is intelligent intuition, the ability to see that a bunch of very different things nonethless fit together if you only make the right supposition. Crime, in reality, is a personal foible; you find the explanation not by method but by a good understanding of people.

I think "Edith Swan-Neck" is structurally the best story in the work; it contains a nice set of twists upon twists. The story is also strengthened by the fact that it does a very good job of showing that Ganimard, Lupin's longsuffering and ever-losing detective opponent, is actually quite brilliant. He may not at the level of Herlock Sholmes or Lupin himself, but he is very, very good at his job. The perpetual danger, of course, is that, fated always to fail in his pursuit of Lupin, he could come across looking like a buffoon or an incompetent, which is to the detriment of Lupin himself. Here, however, as Lupin himself notes, he shows himself to be formidable, and thus to highlight Lupin's own genius all the more. My favorite story in the work, however, is the very charming "The Invisible Prisoner", in which Lupin casually commits a theft by apparently solving the theft he commits.

Favorite Passage: From "Edith Swan-Neck":

"But then why all these complications? Why the theft of one tapestry, followed by its recovery, followed by the theft of the twelve? Why that house-warming? Why that disturbance? Why everything? Your story won't hold water, Ganimard."

"Only because, you, chief, like myself, have stopped halfway; because, strange as this story already sounds, we must go still farther, very much farther, in the direction of the improbable and the astounding. And why not, after all? Remember that we are dealing with Arsène Lupin. With him, is it not always just the improbable and the astounding that we must look for? Must we not always go straight for the maddest suppositions? And, when I say the maddest, I am using the wrong word. On the contrary, the whole thing is wonderfully logical and so simple that a child could understand it. Confederates only betray you. Why employ confederates, when it is so easy and so natural to act for yourself, by yourself, with your own hands and by the means within your own reach?" (p. 231)

Recommendation: Recommended.

******

Maurcie Leblanc, The Confessions of Arsène Lupin, Fox Eye (Leicester: 2022).

Her Many-Pictured Page

 Wanderings
by St. John Henry Newman

Ere yet I left home's youthful shrine,
 My heart and hope were stored
Where first I caught the rays divine,
 And drank the Eternal Word. 

I went afar; the world unroll'd
 Her many-pictured page;
I stored the marvels which she told,
 And trusted to her gage. 

Her pleasures quaff'd, I sought awhile
 The scenes I prized before;
But parent's praise and sister's smile
 Stirr'd my cold heart no more. 

So ever sear, so ever cloy
 Earth's favours as they fade;
Since Adam lost for one fierce joy
 His Eden's sacred shade. 

 Off the Lizard.
December 8, 1832.

Doctor Gratiae

 Today is the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. From Tractate 97 on the Gospel of John:

The Holy Spirit, whom the Lord promised to send to His disciples, to teach them all the truth which, at the time He was speaking to them, they were unable to bear: of the which Holy Spirit, as the apostle says, we have now received the earnest, an expression whereby we are to understand that His fullness is reserved for us till another life: that Holy Spirit, therefore, teaches believers also in the present life, as far as they can severally apprehend what is spiritual; and enkindles a growing desire in their breasts, according as each one makes progress in that love, which will lead him both to love what he knows already, and to long after what still remains to be known: so that those very things which he has some notion of at present, he may know that he is still ignorant of, as they are yet to be known in that life which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man has perceived. But were the inner Master wishing at present to say those things in such a way of knowing, that is, to unfold and make them patent to our mind, our human weakness would be unable to bear them. Whereof you remember, beloved, that I have already spoken, when we were occupied with the words of the holy Gospel, where the Lord says, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Not that in these words of the Lord we should be suspecting an over-fastidious concealment of no one knows what secrets, which might be uttered by the Teacher, but could not be borne by the learner, but those very things which in connection with religious doctrine we read and write, hear and speak of, as within the knowledge of such and such persons, were Christ willing to utter to us in the self-same way as He speaks of them to the holy angels, in His own Person as the only-begotten Word of the Father, and co-eternal with Him, where are the human beings that could bear them, even were they already spiritual, as the apostles still were not when the Lord so spoke to them, and as they afterwards became when the Holy Spirit descended? For, of course, whatever may be known of the creature, is less than the Creator Himself, who is the supreme and true and unchangeable God.

Still the Billows from Numidia Seek the Lovely Roman Shore

 Monica and Augustine
by Lucy Larcom 

 In the martyr Cyprian's chapel there was moaning through the night;
Monica's low prayer stole upward till it met the early light.
Till the dawn came, walking softly o'er the troubled sea without,
Monica for her Augustine wept the dreary watches out. 

 "Lord of all the holy martyrs! Giver of the crown of flame,
Set on hoary-headed Cyprian, who to Thee child-hearted came;
Hear me for my child of promise! Thou his erring way canst see;
Long from Thee a restless wanderer, must he go away from me? 

 "'T is for Thee, O God, a mother this her wondrous child would keep;
Through the ripening of his manhood Thou hast seen me watch and weep.
Tangled in the mesh of Mani, groping through the maze of sense,
Other, deadlier snares await him, if from me he wander hence. 

 "Thine he shall be, Lord; Thy promise brightens up my night of fears:
Faith beholds him at Thy altar, yet baptized with only tears;
For the angel of my vision, came he not from Thy right hand,
Whispering unto me, his mother, "Where thou standest, he shall stand"? 

 "Saviour, Lord, whose name is Faithful, I am Thine, I rest on Thee;
And beside me in Thy kingdom I this wanderer shall see.
Check the tide! hold still the breezes! for his soul's beloved sake,
Do not let him leave me! Keep him -- keep him -- lest my heart should break!" 

 Man must ask, and God will answer, yet we may not understand,
Knowing but our own poor language all the writing of His hand.
In our meagre speech we ask him, and He answers in His own;
Vast beyond our thought the blessing that we blindly judge is none. 

 When the sun rose from the water, Monica was on the shore;
Out of sight had dropped the vessel that afar Augustine bore.
Home she turned, her sad heart singing underneath its load of care,
"Still I know Thy name is faithful, O Thou God that hearest prayer!" 

 By the garden-beds of Ostia now together stand the twain,
Monica and her Augustine, gazing far across the main,
Toward the home-land of Numidia, hiding in the distance dim,
Where God parted them in sorrow, both to bring the nearer Him. 

 And the mother's prayer is answered, for their souls are side by side,
Where His peace flows in upon them with a full eternal tide.
And Augustine's thought is blending with the murmur of the sea;
"Bless Thee, Lord, that we are restless, till we find our rest in Thee!" 

 And their talk, the son and mother, leaning out above the flowers,
Is like lapse of angel-music, linking heaven's enraptured hours.
Hushed is all the song of Nature; hushed is care, and passion's din,
In that hush they hear a welcome from the Highest: -- "Enter in!" 

 "What new mercy has befallen? every earthly wish is gone,"
Monica half speaks, half muses; " why should earthly life move on?
Ah, my son, what peace and gladness surging from this silence roll!
'T is the Eternal Deep that answers to the deep within my soul! 

 "Not a sigh of homesick longing moves the stillness of my heart;
In the light of this great glory, unto God would I depart.
Though more dear thou art than ever, standing at heaven's gate with me,
For the sweetness of His presence I could say farewell to thee." 

 There's a silent room in Ostia; tearless mourners by a bed:
Since the angels roused that sleeper, who shall weep, or call her dead?
Not beside the dust beloved shall her exiled ashes lie;
She awaits the Resurrection underneath a Roman sky. 

 Now Augustine in his bosom keeps the image of a saint,
Whose warm tears of consecration drop on thoughts of sinful taint.
In the home that knew him erring, a bewildered Manichee,
Minister at Truth's high altar, him that mother-saint shall see. 

 In the dreams of midnight, haunted by the ghosts of buried sins;
In the days of calm, the spirit, struggling through temptation, wins;
Monica looks down upon him, joy to bless, and gloom beguile;
And the world can see Augustine clearer for that saintly smile. 

 Still the billows from Numidia seek the lovely Roman shore,
Though Augustine to his mother sailed long since the death-wave o'er,
Still his word sweeps down the ages like the surging of the sea:
"Bless Thee, Lord, that we are restless, till we find our rest in Thee!"

The Greatest of All Lessons

 It is then, as appears, the greatest of all lessons to know one's self. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God, not by wearing gold or long robes, but by well-doing, and by requiring as few things as possible. 

 Now, God alone is in need of nothing, and rejoices most when He sees us bright with the ornament of intelligence; and then, too, rejoices in him who is arrayed in chastity, the sacred stole of the body. Since then the soul consists of three divisions; the intellect, which is called the reasoning faculty, is the inner man, which is the ruler of this man that is seen. And that one, in another respect, God guides. But the irascible part, being brutal, dwells near to insanity. And appetite, which is the third department, is many-shaped above Proteus, the varying sea-god, who changed himself now into one shape, now into another; and it allures to adulteries, to licentiousness, to seductions.

[Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, Book III, Chapter I.]

Rescher and Gallagher on Plurative Syllogisms

Consider the two arguments: 

All A's are B's 
All parts of A's are parts of B's

Most C's are A's 
Most C's are B's
Some A's are B's 

Textbooks often charge that traditional logic is "inadequate" because it cannot accommodate patently valid arguments like the first. But this holds equally true of modern quantificational logic itself, which cannot accommodate the second. Powerful tool though it is, quantificational logic is unequal to certain childishly simple valid arguments, which have featured in the logical literature for over a century (i.e., since the days of De Morgan and Boole). Plurative syllogisms afford an interesting instance of an inferential task in which the powerful machinery of quantificational logic fails us, but to which the humble technique of Venn diagrams proves adequate.

[Nicholas Rescher and Neil Gallagher, "Venn Diagrams for Plurative Syllogisms", Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jun., 1965), p. 55.]

Rescher elsewhere notes (in "Plurality-Quantification", if I am recalling correctly) that plurative syllogisms are even more difficult for standard predicate calculus than they seem. You might think, for instance, that you could solve the problem (as you would with syllogistic) by adding a 'Most' quantifier, (Mx), which in the predicate calculus would have to mean something like 'For most of the individuals x of the universe of discourse'. But it turns out, given how standard predicate calculus structures propositions, that simply adding a Most quantifier to the predicate calculus doesn't make it possible to say that Most S are P. You get something that looks superficially like it, but doesn't have the right logical properties; in other words, the standard pred. calc. rules for quantifiers and how they are used are tailored specifically for universal quantifiers and existential quantifiers and how those quantifiers, specifically, relate to each other, so merely adding a plurative quantifier doesn't get you something that works right. You'd have to rebuild the system from the ground up to get things right.

As Rescher and Gallagher note, people have a long history of criticizing basic syllogistic and class logics for not having an immediately obvious way to handle relational arguments (like the first in Rescher's and Gallagher's comment above), while at the same time just ignoring the basic kinds of argument that the predicate calculus doesn't directly accommodate. In reality, of course, this is a childish way of arguing; your logical system always has a purpose, and it just doesn't have to deal with things that are not part of the purpose; that you might use a different logical system for a different thing has no bearing on the value of any logical system. But people often seem allergic to this sort of logical pluralism; they really want there to be a ONE TRUE LOGIC, in the sense of a logical system that covers absolutely everything logical that you might want to do, or to which everything logical could be cleanly reduced. But there isn't one, and even if there were, we don't have it.

This, of course, is different from holding that all logical systems are equally good. For one, given a particular logical purpose, not all logical systems are equally good means to that end. And, perhaps more importantly, not all logical purposes are equally important. It would be entirely possible to argue that one logical system, or one family of logical systems, is the primary logical system, in the sense of being the best logical system for the most basic or the most important thing logic can be used for. No doubt there would be some controversy about it, but you could very well argue it.  But saying that it is the best instrument for the most important things is not the same as saying that it can do everything important.

Monsignor Knox

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox died on this day in 1957. He was born in Kibworth, in Leicestershire, to an important Evangelical Anglican family; his grandfather on his mother's side had been Bishop of Lahore, and his father eventually became the Bishop of Manchester. He studied at Eton, where he began, much to the dissatisfaction of his family, to take an interest in Anglo-Catholic movements in the Church of England and eventually ended up in the University of Oxford at Balliol College, where he thrived, and afterward was elected fellow of Trinity College. Shortly thereafter he became an Anglican priest and became chaplain of the college. After serving in British intelligence during the Great War, he taught at Shrewsbury School. Then in 1917, he converted to Catholicism, resigning his chaplaincy, which provoked a family crisis, as his father then cut him out of his will. He was ordained a Catholic priest and began teaching at St. Edmund's College. 

Knox was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction alike, a significant member of the Detection Club, a major figure in early broadcasting, and the translator of the Knox Version of the Bible. From Heaven and Charing Cross, his book of Corpus Christi sermons:

...You see, we are so materialistic, our minds are so chained to the things of sense, that we imagine our Lord as instituting the Blessed Sacrament with bread and wine as the remote matter of it because bread and wine reminded him of that grace which he intended the Blessed Sacrament to bestow. But, if you come to think of it, it was just the other way about. When he created the worlds he gave common bread and wine for our use in order that we might understand what the Blessed Sacrament was when it came to be instituted. He did not design the Sacred Host to be something like bread. He designed bread to be something like the Sacred Host.

Always, it is the things which affect us outwardly and impress themselves on our senses that are the shams, the imaginaries; reality belongs to the things of the spirit. All the din and clatter of the streets, all the great factories which dominate our landscape, are only echoes and shadows if you think of them for a moment in the light of eternity; the Reality is in here, is there above the altar, is that part of it which our eyes cannot see and our senses cannot distinguish.... (pp. 13-14).