"To be of any use to you," answered Doctor Lagarde, "I must be thrown into the magnetic trance. The person who has the strongest influence over me is the person who will do it to-night."He turned to his mother. "When you like," he said.
Bending over him, she took both the Doctor's hands, and looked steadily into his eyes. No words passed between them; nothing more took place. In a minute or two, his head was resting against the back of the chair, and his eyelids had closed.
"Are you sleeping?" asked Madame Lagarde.
"I am sleeping," he answered.
She laid his hands gently on the arms of the chair, and turned to address the visitor.
"Let the sleep gain on him for a minute or two more," she said.
"Then take one of his hands, and put to him what questions you please.""Does he hear us now, madam?"
"You might fire off a pistol, sir, close to his ear, and he would not hear it. The vibration might disturb him; that is all. Until you or I touch him, and so establish the nervous sympathy, he is as lost to all sense of our presence here, as if he were dead.""Are you speaking of the thing called Animal Magnetism, madam?""Yes, sir."
"And you believe in it, of course?"
