"We must try."
She went firmly to the bed. After all here was a clear and definite phenomenon; it had to be taken into account: this man was alive. It was necessary therefore to treat him as a living being, who has ears to hear and a mouth to speak with, and who distinguishes the things about him by a personal existence. This man had a name. Every circumstance pointed directly to the fact that his presence in this sealed chamber was the result not of a miracle—a hypothesis which they need only examine as a last resort—but of an experiment that had succeeded—a hypothesis which one had no right to set aside for a priori reasons, however astonishing it might appear to be.
Then why not question him?
She sat down beside him, took his hands, which were cold and moist, in hers and said gravely:
"We have hastened hither at your summons.... We are they to whom the gold medal——"
She stopped. The words were not coming easily to her. They seemed to her absurd and childish; and she was quite certain that they must appear so to those who heard them. But she must make an effort to continue:
"In our families the gold medal has passed from hand to hand right down to us.... It is now for two centuries that the tradition has been forming and that your will——"
But she was incapable of continuing on these pompous lines. Another voice within her murmured:
"Goodness, how idiotic what I am saying is!"
However, the hands of the man were growing warm from their contact with hers. He almost wore an air of hearing the noise of her words and of understanding that they were addressed to him. And so, dropping the phrase-making, she brought herself to speak to him simply, as to a poor man whom his resurrection did not set apart from human necessities: