I love it. The sea is everything. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert where man is never alone, for he feels life quivering around him on every side. The sea does not belong to despots. On its surface iniquitous rights can still be exercised, men can fight there, devour each other there, and transport all terrestrial horrors there. But at thirty feet below its level their power ceases, their influence dies out, their might disappears. Ah, sir, live in the bosom of the waters! There alone is independence! There I recognise no masters! There I am free!’
Captain Nemo stopped suddenly in the midst of this burst of enthusiasm. Had he let himself be carried out of his habitual reserve? Had he said too much? During some moments he walked about much agitated. Then his nerves became calmer, his face regained its usual calm expression, and turning towards me, –
‘Now, professor,’ said he, ‘if you wish to visit the Nautilus, I am at your service.’
Captain Nemo rose, and I followed him. A folding door, contrived at the back of the room, opened, and I entered a room about the same size as the one I had just left.
It was a library. High bookcases of black rosewood supported on their shelves a great number of books in uniform binding. They went round the room, terminating at their lower part in large divans, covered with brown leather, curved so as to afford the greatest comfort. Light, movable desks, made to slide in and out at will, were there to rest one’s book while reading. In the centre was a vast table, covered with pamphlets, amongst which appeared some newspapers, already old. The electric light flooded this harmonious whole, and was shed from four polished globes half sunk in the volutes of the ceiling. This room, so ingeniously fitted up, excited my admiration, and I could scarcely believe my eyes.
‘Captain Nemo,’ said I to my host, who had just thrown himself on one of the divans, ‘you have a library here that would do honour to more than one continental palace, and I am lost in wonder when I think that it can follow you to the greatest depths of the ocean.’
‘Where could there be more solitude or more silence, professor?’ answered Captain Nemo. ‘Did your study in the museum offer you as complete quiet?’
‘No, and I must acknowledge it is a very poor one compared with yours. You must have from six to seven thousand volumes here.’
‘Twelve thousand, M. Aronnax. These are the only ties between me and the earth. But the day that my Nautilus plunged for the first time beneath the waters the world was at an end for me. That day I bought my last books, my last pamphlets, and my last newspapers; and since then I wish to believe that men no longer think nor write. These books, professor, are at your disposition, and you can use them freely.’
I thanked Captain Nemo, and went up to the library shelves. Books of science, ethics, and literature – written in every language – were there in quantities; but I did not see a single work on political economy amongst them; they seemed to be severely prohibited on board. A curious detail was that all these books were classified indistinctly, in whatever language they were written, and this confusion showed that the captain of the Nautilus could read with the utmost facility any volume he might take up by chance.
‘This room is not only a library,’ said Captain Nemo; ‘it is a smoking-room too.’
‘A smoking-room?’ cried I. ‘Do you smoke here, then?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then, sir, I am forced to believe that you have kept up relations with Havana?’
‘No, I have not,’ answered the captain. Accept this cigar, M. Aronnax; although it does not come from Havana, you will be pleased with it if you are a connoisseur.’
I took the cigar that was offered me; its shape was something like that of a Londres, but it seemed to be made of leaves of gold. I lighted it at a little brazier which was supported on an elegant bronze pedestal, and drew the first whiffs with the delight of an amateur who has not smoked for two days.
‘It is excellent,’ said I, ‘but it is not tobacco.’
‘No,’ answered the captain. ‘This tobacco comes neither from Havana nor the East. It is a sort of seaweed, rich in nicotine, with which the sea supplies me, but somewhat sparingly. If you do not regret the Londres, M. Aronnax, smoke these as much as you like.’
As Captain Nemo spoke he opened the opposite door to the one by which we had entered the library, and I passed into an immense and brilliantly-lighted saloon. It was a vast four-sided room, with panelled walls, measuring thirty feet by eighteen, and about fifteen feet high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with light arabesques, distributed a soft, clear light over all the marvels collected in the museum. For it was, in fact, a museum in which an intelligent and prodigal hand had gathered together all the treasures of nature and art with the artistic confusion of a painter’s studio.
About thirty pictures by the first artists, uniformly framed and separated by brilliant drapery, were hung on tapestry of severe design. I saw there works of great value, most of which I had admired in the special collections of Europe, and in exhibitions of paintings. The amazement which the captain of the Nautilus had predicted had already begun to take possession of me.
‘Professor,’ then said this strange man, ‘you must excuse the unceremonious way in which I receive you, and the disorder of this room.’
‘Sir,’ I answered, ‘without seeking to know who you are, may I be allowed to recognise in you an artist?’
‘Only an amateur, sir. Formerly I liked to collect these works of art. I was a greedy collector and an indefatigable antiquary, and have been able to get together some objects of great value. These are my last gatherings from that world which is now dead to me. In my eyes your modern artists are already old; they have two or three thousand years of existence, and all masters are of the same age in my mind.’
‘And these musicians?’ said I, pointing to the works of Weber, Rossini, Mozart, and many others, scattered over a large piano-organ fixed in one of the panels of the room.
‘These musicians,’ answered Captain Nemo, ‘are contemporaries of Orpheus, for all chronological differences are effaced in the memory of the dead; and I am dead, as much dead as those of your friends who are resting six feet under the earth!
Captain Nemo ceased talking, and seemed lost in a profound reverie. I looked at him with great interest, analysing in silence the strange expressions of his face.
I respected his meditation, and went on passing in review the curiosities that enriched the saloon. They consisted principally of marine plants, shells, and other productions of the ocean, which must have been found by Captain Nemo himself. In the centre of the saloon rose a jet of water lighted up by electricity, and falling into a basin formed of a single tridacne shell, measuring about seven yards in circumference; it, therefore, surpassed in size the beautiful tridacnes given to Francis I. of France by the Venetian Republic, and that now form two basins for holy water in the church of Saint Sulpice in Paris.
All round this basin were elegant glass cases, fastened by copper rivets, in which were classed and labelled the most precious productions of the sea that had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist. My delight as a professor may be imagined. I saw there a collection of inestimable value. Amongst these specimens I quote from
