“What is this?” he stammered, looking around him with staring eyes. “What—what do I hear?”
But he could see nothing; Coucou Peter’s head was hidden by a pile of straw in the rack, and this excellent disciple laughed till his sides were almost split. After awhile, he went on in bellowing tones—
“Oh! oh! oh! I am very unhappy! I was the great Nebuchadnezzar. I thought of nothing but drinking and eating, and so I lost my place on the Ladder of Beings! Oh! oh! oh! I’m very unhappy.”
But the Doctor, though at first dumfounded, recognised the fiddler’s voice.
“Coucou Peter,” he cried, “how dare you profane the most sublime philosophy? Do you imagine me so foolish as to give credence to vain illusions?”
Coucou Peter came out of the barn, laughing with all his might.
“Ha! ha! ha! what a joke! what a joke, Doctor Frantz! When I saw you talking to the bull, it came into my head to have a bit of fun.”
Mathéus himself could not help laughing, for he had, at first, been taken in.
“I knew well,” he said, “that souls cannot retrograde in the order of Nature; it is impossible—contrary to the system; therefore my surprise was great, and it was that which made me discover your trick. The human soul cannot exist in the body of an animal; it could not find sufficient room for the brain.”