Payot was about to give Marcel the coup de grace, but Delapine was too quick for him. Stepping up he made a pass with his hand in front of Payot's face, and hypnotised him with a long steady gaze in his eyes. "Sleep," he said in a calm and penetrating voice. "Sleep on and banish all recollection of this deed from your mind for ever. Henceforth be friends with Marcel, control your temper, and devote yourself to your daughter whom you have so long neglected." Immediately Payot dropped down as if he had been struck by lightning. When the other gentlemen bent over him, as they did an instant later, they found him fast asleep and snoring loudly. "You may shake him as much as you please, gentlemen, but I defy you to wake him. Just try and do it, if it amuses you." They all three shook him, and thumped him with their fists as hard as they could, but they might as well have tried to revive a corpse. Not a sign of life did he show beyond his rythmic stertorous breathing. Villebois, Riche, and Marcel looked at one another in amazement. "Now will two of you gentlemen kindly carry him into the next room and lay him on the sofa. You need not have the least anxiety about him, as he cannot wake up until I give him permission." "And what will happen then?" asked Riche. "Then he will wake up the moment I give the word." "Do you have to shake him, or what do you do?" asked Marcel. "I don't even need to be in the house," replied the professor. "He will be obliged to obey me wherever I may happen to be at the time. Even if I am a thousand miles away it will not make the slightest difference as regards the result." "Great Scott!" replied Marcel, looking at Delapine in astonishment. "I must ask you as a favour, gentlemen, not to speak of this painful incident to anyone again," said the professor, "as Monsieur Payot will not have the slightest inkling of it when he wakes up." "Now," said Delapine, as Riche and Villebois returned from the adjoining room, "let us attend to the ladies." By repeated applications of smelling salts Madame Villebois was soon brought round, and she was conveyed to her room by her husband. During their absence the poet went to his room, and with Villebois' assistance, removed all traces of his recent fight, and putting on a fresh collar made himself presentable once more. "I feel as fresh as a fiddle now, thanks to my wash and brush down." "If you will not mind waiting for me in the library until I have fixed things up I should be awfully obliged," said Delapine, "as I must see after the two young ladies." The professor went downstairs and proceeded to pacify Renée by assuring her that her father would wake up perfectly calm, and utterly oblivious of his terrible outburst of temper. "Are you quite sure he will not remember what has occurred?" she asked. "Perfectly," he replied. Renée was by this time so accustomed to finding Delapine's forecasts prove correct, that she felt quite at ease, and even happy.