Scene XVIII. The same, without Betsy, Márya Konstantínovna, Petríshchev, and Vasíli Leonídych.
Stout Lady (to Grossmann). What? How? Are you rested? (Grossmann does not answer. To Sakhátov.) Sergyéy Iványch, did you feel the efflux?
Sakhátov. I did not feel anything. But it was nice, very nice,—quite a success.
Baroness. Admirable! Ça ne le fait pas souffrir?
Leoníd Fédorovich. Pas le moins du monde.
Professor (to Grossmann). Permit me to ask you. (Giving him the thermometer.) At the beginning of the test it was thirty-seven and two. (To the doctor.) That is correct, I think? Be so kind as to verify the pulse. A loss is unavoidable.
Doctor (to Grossmann). Well, sir, let me take your pulse. We will verify it, we will. (Takes out his watch and holds his hand.)
Stout Lady (to Grossmann). Excuse me! The condition in which you were cannot be called sleep?
Grossman (tired). It is the same hypnosis.
Sakhátov. Then we must understand it in the sense of your having hypnotized yourself?
Grossman. Why not? Hypnosis can take place not only through association, as, for example, at the sound of a tam-tam, as with Charcot, but by a mere entrance into a hypnogenic zone.
Sakhátov. I shall admit that that is correct, but it is desirable more clearly to define what hypnosis is.
Professor. Hypnosis is the phenomenon of the transmutation of one energy into another.
Grossman. Charcot did not define it thus.
Sakhátov. Excuse me, excuse me. Such is your definition, but Libot told me himself—
Doctor (giving up the pulse). Ah, it is all right, all right. Now the temperature.
