"But pardon, Monsieur,--I see that you are impatient. You shall immediately hear all I have to say,--after I have, in a few words, given you a brief insight into the nature of my invention. Come, then!--Has it ever occurred to Monsieur to reflect upon that something which we call _Sympathy?_ The philosophers, you know, and the physiologists, the followers of that _coquin_, Mesmer, and the _bêtes_ Spiritualists, as they now dub themselves,--these have written, talked, and speculated much about it. I doubt not these fellows have aided Monsieur in perplexing his brain respecting the diverse, the world-wide ramifications of this physiological problem. The limits, indeed, of Sympathy have not been, cannot be, rightly set or defined; and there are those who embrace under such a capitulation half the dark mysteries that bother our heads when we think of Life's under-current,--instinct,--clairvoyance,--trance,--ecstasy,--all the dim and inner sensations of the Spirit, where it touches the Flesh as perceptibly, but as unseen and unanalyzed, as the kiss of the breeze at evening. _Sans doute,_ Monsieur, 'tis very wonderful, all this,--and then, also, 'tis very convenient. Our ships must have a steersman, you know. And, _par exemple,_ unless we call it sympathetic, that strange susceptibility which we see in many persons, detect in ourselves sometimes, what name have we to give it at all? Unless we call it sympathy, how shall we define those mysterious premonitions, shadowy warnings, solemn foretokens, that fall upon us now and then as the dew falls upon the grass-leaf, that make our blood to shiver and our flesh to quake, and will not by any means permit themselves to be passed by or nullified? 'T is a fact that is irrepressible; and, in persons with imagination of morbid tendency, this spontaneous sympathy takes a hold so strong as to present visibly the image about which there is concern,--and, behold! your veritable spectre is begotten! So, again, of your 'love at first sight,' _comme on dit_,--that inevitable attraction which one person exerts towards another, in spite, it may be, both of reason and judgment. If this be not child of sympathy, what parentage shall we assign it? And antipathy, Monsieur, the medal's reverse,--your _bête noire_, for instance,--expound me that! Why do you so shudder at sight of this or that innocent object? You cannot reason it away,--'t is always there; you cannot explain it, nor diagnose its symptoms,--'t is a part of you, governed by the same laws that govern your 'elective affinities' throughout. But note, Monsieur! You and I and man in general are not alone in this: the whole organic world--nay, some say the entire universe, inorganic as well as organic--is subject to these impalpable sympathetic forces. Is the hypothesis altogether fanciful of chemical election and rejection,--of the kiss and the kick of the magnet? Your Sensitive-Plant, your Dionea, your Rose of Jericho, your Orinoco-blossom