The doctor's words astounded him. He kept thinking of them with his eyes staring before him, and suddenly had another seizure.
Vaucorbeil watched him, then, with a fillip, knocked off his cap.
Pécuchet recovered his faculties.
"I suspected as much," said the physician; "the glazed peak hypnotises you like a mirror; and this phenomenon is not rare with persons who look at a shining substance too attentively."
He pointed out how the experiment might be made on hens, then mounted his nag, and slowly disappeared from their view.
Half a league further on they noticed, in a farmyard, a pyramidal object stretched out towards the horizon. It might have been compared to an enormous bunch of black grapes marked here and there with red dots. It was, in fact, a long pole, garnished, according to the Norman custom, with cross-bars, on which were perched turkeys bridling in the sunshine.
"Let us go in." And Pécuchet accosted the farmer, who yielded to their request.
They traced a line with whiting in the middle of the press, tied down the claws of a turkey-cock, then stretched him flat on his belly, with his beak placed on the line. The fowl shut his eyes, and soon presented the appearance of being dead. The same process was gone through with the others. Bouvard passed them quickly across to Pécuchet, who ranged them on the side on which they had become torpid.
The people about the farm-house exhibited uneasiness. The mistress screamed, and a little girl began to cry.
Bouvard loosened all the turkeys. They gradually revived; but one could not tell what might be the consequences.