nor from the East. It is a kind of sea-weed, rich in nicotine,
with which the sea provides me, but somewhat sparingly."

At that moment Captain Nemo opened a door which stood opposite
to that by which I had entered the library, and I passed into
an immense drawing-room splendidly lighted.

It was a vast, four-sided room, thirty feet long, eighteen wide,
and fifteen high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with light arabesques,
shed a soft clear light over all the marvels accumulated in this museum.
For it was in fact a museum, in which an intelligent and prodigal hand
had gathered all the treasures of nature and art, with the artistic
confusion which distinguishes a painter's studio.

Thirty first-rate pictures, uniformly framed, separated by bright
drapery, ornamented the walls, which were hung with tapestry of severe
design. I saw works of great value, the greater part of which I had
admired in the special collections of Europe, and in the exhibitions of
paintings. The several schools of the old masters were represented by a
Madonna of Raphael, a Virgin of Leonardo da Vinci, a nymph of Corregio,
a woman of Titan, an Adoration of Veronese, an Assumption of Murillo, a
portrait of Holbein, a monk of Velasquez, a martyr of Ribera, a fair of
Rubens, two Flemish landscapes of Teniers, three little "genre" pictures
of Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two specimens of Gericault and
Prudhon, and some sea-pieces of Backhuysen and Vernet. Amongst the
works of modern painters were pictures with the signatures of Delacroix,
Ingres, Decamps, Troyon, Meissonier, Daubigny, etc.; and some admirable
statues in marble and bronze, after the finest antique models, stood
upon pedestals in the corners of this magnificent museum. Amazement,
as the Captain of the Nautilus had predicted, had already begun to
take possession of me.

"Professor," 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,
I recognise in you an artist."

"An amateur, nothing more, sir. Formerly I loved to collect
these beautiful works created by the hand of man.
I sought them greedily, and ferreted them out indefatigably,
and I have been able to bring together some objects of great value.
These are my last souvenirs of that world which is dead to me.
In my eyes, your modern artists are already old; they have two or
three thousand years of existence; I confound them in my own mind.
Masters have no age."

"And these musicians?" said I, pointing out some works of Weber,
Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber,
Gounod, and a number of others, scattered over a large model piano-organ
which occupied one of the panels of the drawing-room.

"These musicians," replied Captain Nemo, "are the contemporaries of
Orpheus; for in the memory of the dead all chronological differences are
effaced; and I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends
who are sleeping six feet under the earth!"

Captain Nemo was silent, and seemed lost in a profound reverie. I
contemplated him with deep interest, analysing in silence the strange
expression of his countenance. Leaning on his elbow against an angle of
a costly mosaic table, he no longer saw me,--he had forgotten my
presence.

I did not disturb this reverie, and continued my observation of the
curiosities which enriched this drawing-room.

Under elegant glass cases, fixed by copper rivets, were classed
and labelled the most precious productions of the sea
which had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist.
My delight as a professor may be conceived.

The division containing the zoophytes presented the most curious
specimens of the two groups of polypi and echinodermes. In the first
group, the tubipores, were gorgones arranged like a fan, soft sponges of
Syria, ises of the Moluccas, pennatules, an admirable virgularia of the
Norwegian seas, variegated unbellulairae, alcyonariae, a whole series
of madrepores, which my master Milne Edwards has so cleverly classified,
amongst which I remarked some wonderful flabellinae oculinae of the
Island of Bourbon, the "Neptune's car" of the Antilles, superb varieties
of corals--in short, every species of those curious polypi of which
entire islands are formed, which will one day become continents. Of the
echinodermes, remarkable for their coating of spines, asteri, sea-stars,
pantacrinae, comatules, asterophons, echini, holothuri, etc.,
represented individually a complete collection of this group.

A somewhat nervous conchyliologist would certainly have fainted before
other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of
molluscs. It was a collection of inestimable value, which time fails me
to describe minutely. Amongst these specimens I will quote from memory
only the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, whose regular
white spots stood out brightly on a red and brown ground, an imperial
spondyle, bright-coloured, bristling with spines, a rare specimen in the
European museums--(I estimated its value at not less than £1000); a
common hammer-fish of the seas of New Holland, which is only procured
with difficulty; exotic buccardia of Senegal; fragile white bivalve
shells, which a breath might shatter like a soap-bubble; several
varieties of the aspirgillum of Java, a kind of calcareous tube, edged
with leafy folds, and much debated by amateurs; a whole series of
trochi, some a greenish-yellow, found in the American seas, others a
reddish-brown, natives of Australian waters; others from the Gulf of


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