A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER II.

A MYS­TERY TO BE SOLVED AT ANY PRICE

That study of his was a mu­se­um, and noth­ing else. Spec­imens of ev­ery­thing known in min­er­al­ogy lay there in their places in per­fect or­der, and cor­rect­ly named, di­vid­ed in­to in­flammable, metal­lic, and lithoid min­er­als.

How well I knew all these bits of sci­ence! Many a time, in­stead of en­joy­ing the com­pa­ny of lads of my own age, I had pre­ferred dust­ing these graphites, an­thracites, coals, lig­nites, and peats! And there were bi­tu­mens, resins, or­gan­ic salts, to be pro­tect­ed from the least grain of dust; and met­als, from iron to gold, met­als whose cur­rent val­ue al­to­geth­er dis­ap­peared in the pres­ence of the re­pub­li­can equal­ity of sci­en­tif­ic spec­imens; and stones too, enough to re­build en­tire­ly the house in Königstrasse, even with a hand­some ad­di­tion­al room, which would have suit­ed me ad­mirably.

But on en­ter­ing this study now I thought of none of all these won­ders; my un­cle alone filled my thoughts. He had thrown him­self in­to a vel­vet easy-​chair, and was grasp­ing be­tween his hands a book over which he bent, pon­der­ing with in­tense ad­mi­ra­tion.

“Here’s a re­mark­able book! What a won­der­ful book!” he was ex­claim­ing.

These ejac­ula­tions brought to my mind the fact that my un­cle was li­able to oc­ca­sion­al fits of bib­lio­ma­nia; but no old book had any val­ue in his eyes un­less it had the virtue of be­ing nowhere else to be found, or, at any rate, of be­ing il­leg­ible.

“Well, now; don’t you see it yet? Why I have got a price­less trea­sure, that I found his morn­ing, in rum­mag­ing in old Hevelius’s shop, the Jew.”

“Mag­nif­icent!” I replied, with a good im­ita­tion of en­thu­si­asm.

What was the good of all this fuss about an old quar­to, bound in rough calf, a yel­low, fad­ed vol­ume, with a ragged seal de­pend­ing from it?

But for all that there was no lull yet in the ad­mir­ing ex­cla­ma­tions of the Pro­fes­sor.

“See,” he went on, both ask­ing the ques­tions and sup­ply­ing the an­swers. “Isn’t it a beau­ty? Yes; splen­did! Did you ev­er see such a bind­ing? Doesn’t the book open eas­ily? Yes; it stops open any­where. But does it shut equal­ly well? Yes; for the bind­ing and the leaves are flush, all in a straight line, and no gaps or open­ings any­where. And look at its back, af­ter sev­en hun­dred years. Why, Boz­eri­an, Closs, or Pur­gold might have been proud of such a bind­ing!”

While rapid­ly mak­ing these com­ments my un­cle kept open­ing and shut­ting the old tome. I re­al­ly could do no less than ask a ques­tion about its con­tents, al­though I did not feel the slight­est in­ter­est.

“And what is the ti­tle of this mar­vel­lous work?” I asked with an af­fect­ed ea­ger­ness which he must have been very blind not to see through.

“This work,” replied my un­cle, fir­ing up with re­newed en­thu­si­asm, “this work is the Heims Kringla of Snorre Turlle­son, the most fa­mous Ice­landic au­thor of the twelfth cen­tu­ry! It is the chron­icle of the Nor­we­gian princes who ruled in Ice­land.”

“In­deed;” I cried, keep­ing up won­der­ful­ly, “of course it is a Ger­man trans­la­tion?”

“What!” sharply replied the Pro­fes­sor, “a trans­la­tion! What should I do with a trans­la­tion? This _is_ the Ice­landic orig­inal, in the mag­nif­icent id­iomat­ic ver­nac­ular, which is both rich and sim­ple, and ad­mits of an in­fi­nite va­ri­ety of gram­mat­ical com­bi­na­tions and ver­bal mod­ifi­ca­tions.”

“Like Ger­man.” I hap­pi­ly ven­tured.

“Yes.” replied my un­cle, shrug­ging his shoul­ders; “but, in ad­di­tion to all this, the Ice­landic has three num­bers like the Greek, and ir­reg­ular de­clen­sions of nouns prop­er like the Latin.”

“Ah!” said I, a lit­tle moved out of my in­dif­fer­ence; “and is the type good?”

“Type! What do you mean by talk­ing of type, wretched Ax­el? Type! Do you take it for a print­ed book, you ig­no­rant fool? It is a manuscript, a Runic manuscript.”

“Runic?”

“Yes. Do you want me to ex­plain what that is?”

“Of course not,” I replied in the tone of an in­jured man. But my un­cle per­se­vered, and told me, against my will, of many things I cared noth­ing about.

“Runic char­ac­ters were in use in Ice­land in for­mer ages. They were in­vent­ed, it is said, by Odin him­self. Look there, and won­der, im­pi­ous young man, and ad­mire these let­ters, the in­ven­tion of the Scan­di­na­vian god!”

Well, well! not know­ing what to say, I was go­ing to pros­trate my­self be­fore this won­der­ful book, a way of an­swer­ing equal­ly pleas­ing to gods and kings, and which has the ad­van­tage of nev­er giv­ing them any em­bar­rass­ment, when a lit­tle in­ci­dent hap­pened to di­vert con­ver­sa­tion in­to an­oth­er chan­nel.

This was the ap­pear­ance of a dirty slip of parch­ment, which slipped out of the vol­ume and fell up­on the floor.

My un­cle pounced up­on this shred with in­cred­ible avid­ity. An old doc­ument, en­closed an im­memo­ri­al time with­in the folds of this old book, had for him an im­mea­sur­able val­ue.

“What’s this?” he cried.

And he laid out up­on the ta­ble a piece of parch­ment, five inch­es by three, and along which were traced cer­tain mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ters.

Here is the ex­act fac­sim­ile. I think it im­por­tant to let these strange signs be pub­licly known, for they were the means of draw­ing on Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock and his nephew to un­der­take the most won­der­ful ex­pe­di­tion of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.

[Runic glyphs oc­cur here]

The Pro­fes­sor mused a few mo­ments over this se­ries of char­ac­ters; then rais­ing his spec­ta­cles he pro­nounced:

“These are Runic let­ters; they are ex­act­ly like those of the manuscript of Snorre Turlle­son. But, what on earth is their mean­ing?”

Runic let­ters ap­pear­ing to my mind to be an in­ven­tion of the learned to mys­ti­fy this poor world, I was not sor­ry to see my un­cle suf­fer­ing the pangs of mys­ti­fi­ca­tion. At least, so it seemed to me, judg­ing from his fin­gers, which were be­gin­ning to work with ter­ri­ble en­er­gy.

“It is cer­tain­ly old Ice­landic,” he mut­tered be­tween his teeth.

And Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock must have known, for he was ac­knowl­edged to be quite a poly­glot. Not that he could speak flu­ent­ly in the two thou­sand lan­guages and twelve thou­sand di­alects which are spo­ken on the earth, but he knew at least his share of them.

So he was go­ing, in the pres­ence of this dif­fi­cul­ty, to give way to all the im­petu­os­ity of his char­ac­ter, and I was prepar­ing for a vi­olent out­break, when two o’clock struck by the lit­tle time­piece over the fire­place.

At that mo­ment our good house­keep­er Martha opened the study door, say­ing:

“Din­ner is ready!”

I am afraid he sent that soup to where it would boil away to noth­ing, and Martha took to her heels for safe­ty. I fol­lowed her, and hard­ly know­ing how I got there I found my­self seat­ed in my usu­al place.

I wait­ed a few min­utes. No Pro­fes­sor came. Nev­er with­in my re­mem­brance had he missed the im­por­tant cer­emo­ni­al of din­ner. And yet what a good din­ner it was! There was pars­ley soup, an omelette of ham gar­nished with spiced sor­rel, a fil­let of veal with com­pote of prunes; for dessert, crys­tallised fruit; the whole washed down with sweet Moselle.

All this my un­cle was go­ing to sac­ri­fice to a bit of old parch­ment. As an af­fec­tion­ate and at­ten­tive nephew I con­sid­ered it my du­ty to eat for him as well as for my­self, which I did con­sci­en­tious­ly.

“I have nev­er known such a thing,” said Martha. “M. Lieden­brock is not at ta­ble!”

“Who could have be­lieved it?” I said, with my mouth full.

“Some­thing se­ri­ous is go­ing to hap­pen,” said the ser­vant, shak­ing her head.

My opin­ion was, that noth­ing more se­ri­ous would hap­pen than an aw­ful scene when my un­cle should have dis­cov­ered that his din­ner was de­voured. I had come to the last of the fruit when a very loud voice tore me away from the plea­sures of my dessert. With one spring I bound­ed out of the din­ing-​room in­to the study.