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