Note: First published in the Chronique de Paris on March 17, 1836.

Synopsis: The narrator talks about his ability to enter into intense sympathy with people who interest him (he wonders if it's "second sight"), and gives the example of his encounters with a blind fiddler, who was formerly a Venetian nobleman, ruined by gambling. The fiddler also experiences things with a preternatural intensity; he says that even now he can feel when he is in the presence of gold.