“Monsieur, it is ten years since I accomplished, put in practice, and evoked practical results from this international communication, which your two peoples have failed to establish, in spite of all their money, their great ships, and the united wisdom of their savans.  I am a Frenchman, Monsieur,—­and, you know, France is the congenial soil of Science.  In that country, where they laugh ever and se jouent de tout, Science is sacred;—­the Academy has even pas of the army; honors there are higher prized than the very wreaths of glory.  Among the votaries of Science in France, Cesar Prevost was the humblest,—­serviteur, Monsieur. Nevertheless, though my place was only in the outermost porch of the temple, I was a faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing worshipper of the goddess; and therefore, because earnest fidelity has ever its crown of reward, it happened to me to make a grand discovery,—­a discovery more momentous, it may be, than that of gunpowder or the telescope,—­ten million hundred times more worth than the vaunted great achievement of M. le Professeur Morse.  Not that its whole import came to me at once.  No, Monsieur, it is full twenty years now since the first light of it glimmered upon Cesar Prevost’s mind, and he gave ten years of his life to it—­ten faithful years—­before it was perfect to his satisfaction.  Ah, Monsieur, and ’tis more than one year now that I have been what you see me, in consequence of it. Eh, bien! I shall die so,—­rightly,—­but my discovery shall live forever.

“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 betes 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,&mdash
;­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