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."