not a week passed without one of them, or
one of their children dreaming and declaring when they woke up that the
father was drowned. The horrible and continual fear of this accident
makes them always talk about it. Now, if one of these frequent
predictions coincides, by a very simple chance, with the death of the
person referred to, people at once declare it to be a miracle; for they
suddenly lose sight of all the other predictions of misfortune that have
remained unfulfilled. I have myself known fifty cases where the persons
who made the prediction forgot all about it a week after wards. But, if,
then one happens to die, then the recollection of the thing is
immediately revived, and people are ready to believe in the intervention
of God, according to some, and magnetism, according to others."

One of the smokers remarked:

"What you say is right enough; but what about your second story?"

"Oh! my second story is a very delicate matter to relate. It happened to
myself, and so I don't place any great value on my own view of the
matter. An interested party can never give an impartial opinion. However,
here it is:

"Among my acquaintances was a young woman on whom I had never bestowed a
thought, whom I had never even looked at attentively, never taken any
notice of.

"I classed her among the women of no importance, though she was not
bad-looking; she appeared, in fact, to possess eyes, a nose, a mouth,
some sort of hair--just a colorless type of countenance. She was one
of those beings who awaken only a chance, passing thought, but no special
interest, no desire.

"Well, one night, as I was writing some letters by my fireside before
going to bed, I was conscious, in the midst of that train of sensuous
visions that sometimes pass through one's brain in moments of idle
reverie, of a kind of slight influence, passing over me, a little flutter
of the heart, and immediately, without any cause, without any logical
connection of thought, I saw distinctly, as if I were touching her, saw
from head to foot, and disrobed, this young woman to whom I had never
given more that three seconds' thought at a time. I suddenly discovered
in her a number of qualities which I had never before observed, a sweet
charm, a languorous fascination; she awakened in me that sort of restless
emotion that causes one to pursue a woman. But I did not think of her
long. I went to bed and was soon asleep. And I dreamed.

"You have all had these str