An error of softness now may make your future existence one long and useless remorse." Half-an-hour later, having warned the women to their rooms--ordering a variety of disinfecting measures in which Martial science excelled while they were needed there--I opened the door of the death chamber to those who carried in a coffer hollowed out of a dark, exceedingly dense natural stone, and half-filled with a liquid of enormous destructive power.

Then I lifted tenderly the lifeless form, laid it on cushions arranged therein, kissed the lips, and closed the coffer.
Two of Davilo's attendants had meantime adjusted the electric machinery.

We carried the coffer into the apartment where this worked to heat the stove, to keep the lights burning, to raise, warm, and diffuse the water through the house, and perform many other important household services.

Two strong bars of conducting metal were attached to the apparatus, and fitted into two hollows of the coffer.

A flash, a certain hissing sound, followed.