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,--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