conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity
of interrogating more than we constant witness of these little
dramas of fate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are
much clearer than one would believe. Next, we must not forget
that there can be no question here of scientific proofs. We are
in the midst of a slippery and nebulous region, where we would
not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing ourselves to be
guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which we are
not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.

8

We will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who
wish to know the details to the originals, lest we should never
have done; or rather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which
would still be too long, so plentiful are the materials, we will
content ourselves with enumerating a few instances, all taken
from Bozzano's Des Phenomenes premonitoires. We read there of a
funeral procession seen on a high-road several days before it
actually passed that way; or, again, of a young mechanic who, in
the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at half-past
five in the afternoon and saw his sister's little girl run over
by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He
told his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same
month, in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the
child was run over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named.
We find the ghost, the phantom animal or the mysterious noise
which, in certain families, is the traditional herald of a death
or of an imminent catastrophe. We find the celebrated vision
which the painter Segantini had thirteen days before his decease,