Читать книгу Путешествие к центру Земли / A Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Жюль Верн, Жуль Верн - Страница 5

“He is gone!” cried Martha, running out of her kitchen.

“Yes,” I replied, “completely gone.”

“Well; and how about his dinner?” said the servant.

“He won’t have any.”

“And his supper?”

“He won’t have any.”

“What?” cried Martha, with clasped hands.

“No, my dear Martha, he will eat no more. Uncle Liedenbrock is going to decipher an undecipherable scrawl.”

“Oh, my dear!”

She returned to the kitchen.

I was alone. That old document kept working in my brain[21]. My head throbbed with excitement, and I felt an undefined uneasiness. I took the sheet of paper with mysterious letters; and repeated to myself “What does it all mean?”

I tried to group the letters so as to form words. Quite impossible! I was stifling; I wanted air. Unconsciously I fanned myself [22]with the bit of paper, the back and front of which successively came before my eyes. What was my surprise when, in one of those rapid revolutions, at the moment when the back was turned to me I thought I noticed the Latin words “craterem”, “terrestre”, and others.

A sudden light burst in upon me; I had discovered the key to the cipher! To read the document, it was not even necessary to read it through the paper. My eyes were dim, I could scarcely see. I laid the paper upon the table. At a glance I could tell the whole secret.

“Now I’ll read it,” I cried.

I leaned over the table; and I read the whole sentence aloud.

“Ah!” I cried. “But no! No! My uncle will never know it. He will try to know all about it. Ropes will not hold him, such a determined geologist as he is! He will start, in spite of everything and everybody, and he will take me with him, and we will never get back. No, never! never!”

My over-excitement was beyond all description.

“No! No!” I declared energetically; “and as it is in my power to prevent the knowledge of it, I will do it. I will destroy this paper.”

There was a little fire on the hearth. I was about to fling the paper upon the coals, when the study door opened, and my uncle appeared.