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It turned upon scientific questions as befits philosophers; but Professor Liedenbrock was excessively reserved, and at every sentence spoke to me with his eyes, enjoining the most absolute silence upon our plans. In the first place M. Fridrikssen wanted to know what success my uncle had had at the library. "Your library! why there is nothing but a few tattered books upon almost deserted shelves."
"Yes, Herr Liedenbrock; the labours of MM. Olafsen and Povelsen, pursued by order of the king, the researches of Troïl the scientific mission of MM. Gaimard and Robert on the French corvette La Recherche, and lately the observations of scientific men who came in the Reine Hortense, have added materially to our knowledge of Iceland. But I assure you there is plenty left."
As for me, after long resistance, I was overcome by sleep, and fell off at the end of the sofa, while uncle Liedenbrock went on calculating and rubbing out his calculations. When I awoke next morning that indefatigable worker was still at his post.
Fancy an enthusiastic bibliomaniac suddenly brought into the midst of the famous Alexandrian library burnt by Omar and restored by a miracle from its ashes! just such a crazed enthusiast was my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock. But more was to come, when, with a rush through clouds of bone dust, he laid his hand upon a bare skull, and cried with a voice trembling with excitement: "Axel!
Torch in hand, he tried to gather some idea of our situation from the observation of the strata. This calculation could, at best, be but a vague approximation; but a learned man is always a philosopher when he succeeds in remaining cool, and assuredly Professor Liedenbrock possessed this quality to a surprising degree. I could hear him murmuring geological terms.
Had I not bent under the iron rule of the Professor Liedenbrock? Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? Where did error begin?
But Professor Liedenbrock had hastily surveyed all three; he was panting, running from one to the other, gesticulating, and uttering incoherent expressions. Hans and his comrades, seated upon loose lava rocks, looked at him with as much wonder as they knew how to express, and perhaps taking him for an escaped lunatic. Suddenly my uncle uttered a cry.
In the cipher, audax is written avdas, and quod and quem, hod and ken. "Well?" "After dinner, pack up my trunk." "What?" I cried. "And yours!" replied the indefatigable Professor, entering the dining-room. At these words a cold shiver ran through me. Yet I controlled myself; I even resolved to put a good face upon it. Scientific arguments alone could have any weight with Professor Liedenbrock.
I was therefore meditating a proper introduction to the matter, so as not to seem too abrupt, when the Professor jumped up, clapped on his hat, and prepared to go out. Surely he was not going out, to shut us in again! no, never! "Uncle!" I cried. He seemed not to hear me. "Uncle Liedenbrock!" I cried, lifting up my voice. "Ay," he answered like a man suddenly waking. "Uncle, that key!" "What key?
Falconer, Busk, Carpenter, and others scientific Germans were soon joined, and amongst them the forwardest, the most fiery, and the most enthusiastic, was my uncle Liedenbrock. Therefore the genuineness of a fossil human relic of the quaternary period seemed to be incontestably proved and admitted. It is true that this theory met with a most obstinate opponent in M. Elie de Beaumont.
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