“I don’t believe it,” murmured Cynthia.
“Wait and see,” muttered Nancy.
“I must have absolute quiet here, during my demonstrations,” frowned the great Reynaldo. He was a small, slender-boned man in a soiled velvet jacket, and the jetty hair, the low brows, the wide cheekbones of the typical lower class Parisien—an amusing contrast to the bigger, blonder, slow-moving Breton audience.
He asked first for two volunteers from the audience. After considerable shy shuffling of feet and chattering insistence on the part of their feminine escorts, two boys were shoved forward, down the aisle. Laughing, red with embarrassment, the clumsy young fishermen mounted the stage, then half numb with stage fright awaited the next move.
A chorus of murmured advice came from the interested and neighborly audience.
“Silence!” ordered the professor, with a flash of his Paris-black eyes.
Then before the eyes of each volunteer he made passes with his hand, gave a low murmured command, and first one, then the other became glassy eyed and appeared to go into a waking sleep, there on the stage. The hall was intensely still, hardly a foot stirred or a skirt rustled.
Cynthia choked in her handkerchief. “Oh, dear,” she thought. “I believe I’m going to sneeze, and how shall we ever get out of here!” But the scent on her handkerchief, though it nearly strangled her, did put a halt to the sneeze.
“You are now asleep,” the Professor told his subjects. “You will do exactly as I say. Lie down and roll over.”
The two young men lay down on the platform and rolled over. There was a murmur of awe from the onlookers.