Читать книгу 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Жюль Верн, Жуль Верн - Страница 15

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 memory the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, with its white spots standing out brightly on a red and brown ground; an imperial spondyle, bright-coloured, and bristling with spikes, a rare specimen in the museums of Europe, and the value of which I estimated at £800; a hammer-fish from the Australian seas, only procured with difficulty; fragile white bivalve shells that a breath might blow away like a soap-bubble; several varieties of the Java aspirgillum, a sort of calcareous tube, edged with leafy folds, much prized by amateurs; a whole series of trochi, some a greenish yellow, found in the American seas; others of a reddish brown, natives of Australian waters; others from the Gulf of Mexico, remarkable for their imbricated shells: and, rarest of all, the magnificent New Zealand spur.

Apart and in special apartments were chaplets of pearls of the greatest beauty, which the electric light pricked with points of fire; pink pearls, torn from the pinnamarina of the Red Sea; green pearls from the haliotyde iris; yellow, blue, and black pearls, the curious productions of different molluscs from every ocean, and certain mussels from the watercourses of the North; lastly, several specimens of priceless value, gathered from the rarest pintadines. Some of these pearls were bigger than a pigeon’s egg, and were worth more than the one Travernier sold to the Shah of Persia for 3,000,000 francs, and surpassed the one in the possession of the Imaum of Muscat, which I had believed unrivalled.

It was impossible to estimate the worth of this collection. Captain Nemo must have spent millions in acquiring these various specimens, and I was asking myself from whence he had drawn the money to gratify his fancy for collecting, when I was interrupted by these words: – ‘You are examining my shells, professor. They certainly must be interesting to a naturalist, but for me they have a greater charm, for I have collected them all myself, and there is not a sea on the face of the globe that has escaped my search.’

‘I understand, captain – I understand the delight of moving amongst such riches. You are one of those people who lay up treasures for themselves. There is not a museum in Europe that possesses such a collection of marine products. But if I exhaust all my admiration upon it, I shall have none left for the vessel that carries it. I do not wish to penetrate into your secrets, but I must confess that this Nautilus, with the motive power she contains, the contrivances by which she is worked, the powerful agent which propels her, all excite my utmost curiosity. I see hung on the walls of this room instruments the use of which I ignore.’

‘When I told you that you were free on board my vessel, I meant that every portion of the Nautilus was open to your inspection. The instruments you will see in my room, professor, where I shall have much pleasure in explaining their use to you. But come and look at your own cabin.’

I followed Captain Nemo, who, by one of the doors opening from each panel of the drawing-room, regained the waist of the vessel. He conducted me aft, and there I found, not a cabin, but an elegant room with a bed, toilet-table, and several other articles of furniture. I could only thank my host.

‘Your room is next to mine,’ said he, opening a door: ‘and mine opens into the saloon we have just left.’

I entered the captain’s room; it had a severe, almost monkish aspect. A small iron bedstead, an office desk, some articles of toilet – all lighted by a strong light. There were no comforts, only the strictest necessaries.

Captain Nemo pointed to a seat.

‘Pray sit down,’ he said.

I obeyed, and he began thus: –