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 ?" "My son's belief, sir, is my belief in this thing as in other things.
I have heard what he has been saying to you.

It is for me that he sacrifices himself by holding these exhibitions; it is in my poor interests that his hardly-earned money is made.