Читать книгу Путешествие к центру Земли / A Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Жюль Верн, Жуль Верн - Страница 2

On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Otto Liedenbrock[1], rushed into his little house in Hamburg. He was professor at the Johannaeum[2], and was delivering a series of lectures on mineralogy. His teaching was to benefit himself, not others. He was a learned egotist. Germany has many professors of this sort. The name of Liedenbrock was honourably mentioned in colleges and learned societies. Moreover, my uncle was the curator of the museum of mineralogy formed by the Russian ambassador; a most valuable collection, the fame of which is European.

He was a tall man, of an iron constitution, and with a fair complexion. His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his spectacles. His long, thin nose was like a knife blade.

He lived in his own little house in Königstrasse[3], a structure half brick and half wood[4]. My uncle was tolerably rich for a German professor. The house was his own, and everything in it: his god-daughter Gräuben[5], a young girl of seventeen, Martha[6], and myself. As his nephew and an orphan, I became his laboratory assistant. The blood of a mineralogist was in my veins, and in the midst of my specimens I was always happy.