Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.
Les pressentiments, les sympathies et les signes sont trois choses étranges qui, ensemble, forment un mystère dont l'humanité n'a pas encore trouvé la clef; je n'ai jamais ri des pressentiments, parce que j'en ai eu d'étranges; il y a des sympathies qui produisent des effets incompréhensibles, comme celles, par exemple, qui existent entre des parents éloignés et inconnus, sympathies qui se continuent, malgré la distance, à cause de l'origine qui est commune; et les signes pourraient bien n'être que la sympathie entre l'homme et la nature.