"I'm not so sure ... I'm not so sure. It might be a kind of lethargy ... a kind of hypnotic trance," she murmured.
"A trance which lasted two hundred years?"
"I don't know.... I don't understand it."
"Well?"
"Well, we must act."
"But how?"
"As the will tells us to act. The instructions are quite definite. Our duty is to execute them blindly and without question."
"How?"
"We must try to awaken him with the elixir of which the will speaks."
"Here it is," said Marco Dario, picking up from the stool a small object wrapped in linen. He unfolded the wrapping and displayed a phial, of antique shape, heavy, of crystal, with a round bottom and long neck which terminated in a large wax cork.