 The Mystery of Marie Roger by Edgar Allan Poe There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events so that it seems imperfect and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation, instead of Protestantism, came Lutheranism. Novalis. Moral Ansichten. There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural. By coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character, that as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such sentiments, for the half credences of which I speak, have never the full force of thought. Such sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled, unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or as it is technically termed, the calculus of probabilities. Now this calculus is in its essence purely mathematical, and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science, applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation. The extraordinary details which I am now called upon to make public will be found to form, as regards sequence of time, the primary branch of a series of scarcely intelligible coincidences, whose secondary or concluding branch will be recognized by all readers in the late murder of Mary Cecila Rogers at New York. When in an article entitled The Murders in the Rue Morgue, I endeavored about a year ago to depict some very remarkable features in the mental character of my friend, the chivalier si Angus Dupin.