followed in Duponte's steps to the door of his lodging house, he stopped in the doorway and said, "Do not allow entrance to this impertinent young gentlemen again."
Though he was looking at me, he was speaking to his concierge. Duponte turned away and continued upstairs.
I learned when the concierge tended to be out, and that his wife was content to let me through with no questions for a few sous. There is no time to lose, I wrote to Duponte in one of my unread notes to his door that would invariably be slipped back into the hall.
During this time, another letter arrived from Peter back home. His tone had noticeably improved, and he urged that I should return immediately to Baltimore and that I would be welcomed back having finished with my wild oats. He even sent a letter of credit for a generous amount of money at the French bank so I could arrange my trip back without delay. I returned this directly to him, of course, and I wrote back that I would accomplish what I had come to do. I would, at length, successfully deliver Poe from those who would destroy him, and I would do all credit to the name of our legal practice by achieving this promised goal.
Peter wrote subsequently that he was now very seriously considering coming to Paris to find me and bring me back, even if he had to drag me home with his two hands.
I still collected articles on Poe's death from the reading rooms that carried American papers. Generally speaking, newspaper descriptions of Poe had worsened. Moralists used his example to compensate for the lenience shown in the past toward men of genius who had been praised after death despite "dissolute lives." A new low came when a merciless scribbler, one Rufus Griswold, in order to make a penny off this public sentiment, published a biography malevolently brimming with libel and hate toward the poet. Poe's reputation sank further until it was entirely coated in mud.
Occasionally amid this mad fumble to dissect Poe, a new and important detail arose illuminating his final weeks. It had been shown, for instance, that Poe had planned to go to Philadelphia shortly before the time he was discovered in Ryan's hotel in Baltimore. He was to receive one hundred dollars to edit a book of poems for a Mrs. St. Leon Loud. This information, however, was met with the usual mystification of the press, as it was not known whether Poe did go to Philadelphia or not.
Stranger still was the letter shown to the press by Maria Clemm, Poe's former mother-in-law, which she had received from him directly before he left Richmond, telling her of his plans regarding Philadelphia. It was Poe's last letter to his beloved protector. "I am still unable to send you even one dollar-but keep up heart-I hope that our troubles are nearly over," read Poe's tenderhearted letter to her. "Write immediately in reply amp; direct to Philadelphia." Then he went on: "For fear I should not get the letter, sign no name amp; address it to E. S. T. Grey Esqre. God bless amp; protect you my own darling Muddy." It was signed "Your own Eddy."
E. S. T. Grey Esqre? Why would Poe be using a false name in the weeks before his death? Why did he have such fear that Muddy's letter would not reach him in Philadelphia? E. S. T. Grey! The papers that reported this seemed almost to be grinning at the apparent madness of it.
My investigations seemed more urgent than ever, yet here I was in Paris, and Duponte would not even speak with me.
Chapter 8
HAD THIS ALL been a tremendous mistake, a product of some delirious compulsion to be involved in something outside my usual scope and responsibility? If only I had been content with the warmth and reliability of Hattie and Peter! Hadn't there been a time in childhood when I needed no more than the swirling hearth of Glen Eliza and my trusted playmates? Why turn my heart and my plans over to a man like Duponte, encased alone in a moral prison so far from my own home?
I determined to combat my gloominess and occupy myself by visiting the places that, according to the advice of my Paris guidebook, "must be seen by the stranger."
First, I toured the palace at the Champs-elysees, where Louis-Napoleon, president of the Republic, lived in rich splendor. At the great hall of the Champs-elysees, a