[Illustration: MR. FOGG AS A MESMERIST]
They were not disturbed again that night, and in the morning the baby was still fast asleep. Mrs. Fogg said she guessed the poor little darling must have gotten a tooth through, which made it feel easier. Mr. Fogg said, "Maybe it has."
But he had a faint though very dark suspicion that something was wrong.
After breakfast he went up to the bed-room to see if the baby was awake. It still remained asleep; and Mr. Fogg, when he had leaned over and listened to its breathing, shook it roughly three or four times and cleared his throat in a somewhat boisterous manner. But it did not wake, and Mr. Fogg went down stairs with a horrible dread upon him, and assuming his hat prepared to go to the office. Mrs. Fogg called to him,
"Don't slam the front door and wake the baby!"
And then Mr. Fogg did slam it with extraordinary violence; after which he walked up the street with gloom in his soul and a wretched feeling of apprehension that the baby would never waken.
"What on earth would we do if it should stay asleep for years? S'pose'n it should sleep right straight ahead for half a century, and grow to be an old man without knowing its pa and ma, and without ever learning anything or seeing anything!"
The thought maddened him. He remembered Rip Van Winkle; he recalled the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus; he thought of the afflicted woman whom he saw once at a menagerie in a trance, in which she had been for twenty years continuously, excepting when she awoke for a few moments at long intervals to ask for something to eat. Perhaps when he and Mrs. Fogg were dead the baby might be rented to a menagerie, and be carried around the country as a spectacle. The idea haunted him. It made him miserable. He tried for two or three hours to fix his mind upon his office-duties, but it was impossible. He determined to go back to the house to ascertain if the baby had returned to consciousness. When he got there, Mrs. Fogg was beginning to feel very uneasy. She said,
"Isn't it strange, Wilberforce, that the baby stays asleep? He is not awake yet. I suppose it is nervous exhaustion, poor darling! but I am a little worried about it."
Mr. Fogg felt awfully. He went up and jagged a pin into the baby's leg quietly, so that his wife could not see him. Still it lay there wrapped in slumber; and after repeating the experiment he abandoned himself to despair and went back to his office, uncertain whether to fly or to go home and confess the terrible truth to Mrs. Fogg.