The Three Eyes

An inventor returns from a week of secluded experiments looking shaken, then draws three strange figures with pupils at their centres. His nephew tries to understand what Noël Dorgeroux has seen in the darkness at Haut-Meudon Lodge. Around this unsettling opening, Maurice Leblanc places a neglected garden, the inventor's stubborn hopes, and Bérangère, his goddaughter, whose role the narrator links to the coming adventure.

The Three Eyes combines a mystery narrative with speculation about images that exceed the possibilities of ordinary cinema. In a later scene, a crowd watches extraordinary visions of Rheims Cathedral, including its bombardment and wartime damage. The spectators' reactions give these images an emotional force alongside the puzzle of how they are produced. Readers interested in science fiction can follow the connection between experimental science, suspense and the unsettling experience of seeing distant events unfold before an audience.