Part 12 (1/2)

He shouted with delight, and the noise echoed back at him, refracted by the crystals and stalact.i.tes, so that it sounded as if an entire chorus of wide-eyed young men had expressed their amazement. If only Caroline could be here.

He drank in the splendor for minutes, until he remembered he had few torches remaining. Then he extinguished the fire and sat waiting until his eyes adjusted. A brighter patch of the pale glow appeared from below. He would use the staggered flow of stalact.i.tes as a staircase to reach the bottom of the pit.

Nemo made his way, grasping with both hands, feeling with his feet. The stalact.i.tes were slick and damp. Every inch was accomplished at the risk of falling to his death, but he continued, undaunted. He knew there must be an easier path somewhere, for the dinosaur could never have toiled up through this treacherous labyrinth. For Nemo, though, any path that continued to lead forward was as good as any other.

Halfway down, he found a wide ledge, where he curled up and slept again. Some hours later, he woke, drank some mineralized water that had pooled in a depression on one of the rocks, and set off once more.

When he reached the bottom, he fell to his knees on the cold, hard stone. After he caught his breath, he walked toward the brightening light. He emerged into a second grotto, even more vast than the first, and Nemo knew he had stepped into another world -- a fairyland beyond even the wildest theories of modern science.

The ground was soft and crumbly, and the air smelled of mulch. All around him, as far as he could see, stood immense fungi, mushrooms as tall as trees. The mushroom caps were white, each ringed with a golden frill. Some were the size of dining chairs, others grew four times as tall as a man. Wreaths of mist crept around the gigantic toadstools, and dripping strands of moss clung to the rocks. A greenish, cold light filled the chamber as if it oozed from the rock walls.

Far in the distance, obscured by the humid air, Nemo heard a raucous cry from a bird whose species he could not determine. It sounded immense, louder and stranger than any bird he had encountered in his travels.

He walked into the forest of mushrooms like a lost wanderer and stood under them as if seeking refuge beneath Herculean garden umbrellas. They made him think of the parasols Caroline carried when she strolled out in the sun dressed in her finest clothes. Her mother had seen to it that she had the finest accouterments, but Caroline held them awkwardly, daydreaming, letting her parasol droop to the mud as her attention wandered to other things.

Nemo shook that thought from his mind and continued.

He rapped his knuckles against the stiff stem -- or was it the trunk? -- of a mushroom. It was softer than wood, but still firm and thick. When he pushed harder, a rain of dusty spores showered from the broad mushroom cap. They covered him like sawdust as he coughed and sneezed, but he laughed and knocked the mushroom again, setting off another shower. He ran through the mushroom forest, b.u.mping the pallid stems and unleas.h.i.+ng a torrent of spores.

He climbed one of the mushroom trunks and used his pirate cutla.s.s to hack off a chunk of the soft fungus. He chewed on it, finding the delicate flesh a wonderful accompaniment to his preserved dinosaur meat.

Nemo wandered through the mushroom forest, always continuing toward the brightening light. When at last he pa.s.sed beyond the mammoth toadstools, Nemo looked ahead into a steaming primeval jungle filled with prehistoric plant life. He could lose himself in its wonders and mystery for months without end.

Just then Nemo heard the ominous sounds of large creatures cras.h.i.+ng toward him through the dense underbrush.

iii

Paris, ah Paris!

Leaving his backwater town behind, Jules Verne felt as if he had stepped into a color-filled painting by one of the great masters. The buildings, cafes, cathedrals, street performers -- the culture culture -- were all so different from home. The Seine! The Louvre! Notre Dame! It was like a fantastic world from the stories of Marco Polo or the romances of Sir Walter Scott. Paris was indeed the center of France, its heart and its mind. And Verne reveled in being here. -- were all so different from home. The Seine! The Louvre! Notre Dame! It was like a fantastic world from the stories of Marco Polo or the romances of Sir Walter Scott. Paris was indeed the center of France, its heart and its mind. And Verne reveled in being here.

He had at first been fearful of the political turmoil: b.l.o.o.d.y uprisings, gunfire in the streets, worker barricades, revolutionary fervor. His father had been concerned, and his mother had gnawed her fingernails in worry. Verne, though, wrote from his narrow room to rea.s.sure them that he was having a fine time. And, of course, learning much.

He reached Paris in July, just after a long string of violence that had plagued the capitol since February. Though Pierre Verne was a staunch conservative and had raised his son to hold similar opinions, the younger Verne now found it confusing enough just to keep track of who was running which portion of the country during any given week. Politics made him dizzy.

Two years of bad wheat and potato harvests had sent prices soaring, and peasants began looting bakeries and food storehouses, demanding their due. When factories closed, unemployed workers took to the streets. The government refused to inst.i.tute changes, and during a protest march in February, a frightened army patrol had fired into the crowd, triggering a riot.

The incident united the dissatisfied people behind barricades, and even the National Guard joined the rebels after ransacking armories for weapons. Within days they had ousted numerous officials from the government, then marched on King Louis Philippe himself, who abdicated and fled to England. In his wake, the French people declared a new Republic. Elections were held on April 23, and in the following months the government struggled to a.s.sert itself. The bloodiest battles took place in June -- the Archbishop of Paris had been killed while trying to negotiate peace with a pocket of rebels.

A month later, when Verne entered the city with little spending money and an avid curiosity, he explored the alleys and byways, careful to stay clear of any danger. He saw the cluttered barricades thrown up in the streets -- carts, barrels, ladders, and crates stacked on top of furniture to block the military guard. He tried to imagine the bravery, the sacrifices, the heroes and traitors. It took his breath away . . . so long as he didn't have to be counted among the partic.i.p.ants.

Some nights as he lay awake, he heard gunshots in the distance. Later, he spotted white starbursts where bullets had struck the brick walls and shattered windows. He could even see the path of a cannonball down a long street, tracing the wreckage through successive balconies, bal.u.s.trades, and facades. Verne stood with his hands on his narrow hips and marveled at the sight.

Though others railed against the changing governments and charged off to join the continued fighting, Verne kept a low profile in Paris. It was a matter of common sense. He remained in his rooms far from the gunfire, cannon shots, or battle cries. He had no interest in seeing the excitement, did not want to place himself in danger's path.

His lost friend Nemo would probably have gone running in with a flag in one hand and a musket in the other, outraged at the injustice they were fighting. Verne had always admired the idea idea of doing the things Nemo did, but his personal safety took precedence. of doing the things Nemo did, but his personal safety took precedence.

He remained on the outskirts of politics, a mere bystander, risking nothing. Outside the Paris National a.s.sembly, he watched revolutionaries celebrating their victory in April's elections. The shouting men wore cotton caps and raised thin sabers, no doubt stolen from fallen soldiers in the street fighting. Since February, the peasants in the militia had been allowed to carry their own weapons, and they did so with great fervor.

At times, surrounded by turmoil and chaos, strident voices and gunshots, celebrations and parades, he longed for quiet days on the peaceful docks of Ile Feydeau. But then he would remember that Caroline was married to her sea captain, Nemo was lost at sea, and his own father wanted him to spend every hour in the dreary law offices. At least Paris was exciting, in its own way.

To him, there was no point in going home. Verne would rather stay here to feel the excitement in the air, the thrill of liberty -- a vigor that could not be matched in a provincial city like Nantes. In Paris, the world had opened up to him. He discovered the marvels of the theater and the opera. In Nantes, staged dramas had been unusual events, but in Paris Verne grew dizzy trying to keep up with the performances scheduled for every night of the week.

Ah, if only he could afford them all! His father had given him a limited budget based upon what the country lawyer considered a fair cost of living. But the revolutions and the fighting had created extraordinary inflation in Paris, and the value of a franc had plummeted. Verne could buy barely half of what his father expected him to afford with his allowance. Meticulous Pierre Verne required his son to keep an itemized list to prove that he needed a larger monthly stipend.

Verne worked hard in his law cla.s.ses, discussed the various lecturers with his fellow students, and knew how eccentric and facetious their grading systems could be. All of his prior legal knowledge had come from a provincial practice dealing with everyday matters. Yet the professors at the Paris Academy expected him to be familiar with grand ethical arguments and obscure cases that meant nothing on Ile Feydeau.

But Verne studied, anxious to pa.s.s, though he had no desire to become an attorney. A far worse fate, he thought, would be to fail and return home to the wrath of his father. No, he would rather face rapacious pirates or typhoons.

Still, even when his head hurt, his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and his muscles ached from poor food and sheer weariness, Verne found time to spend in the company of stimulating intellectuals.

For hours, he sat with musician friends and aspiring poets in bistros and sipped his coffee oh-so-slowly so as not to have to purchase another cup. They spouted verse to each other, reminding Verne of the evenings his family had challenged each other to make rhymes. He also met other writers, one of whom had even had a two-act tragedy performed in a small puppet theater, which made him a celebrity in their circle.

His mind filled to overflowing, Verne's imagination caught fire. He remembered his literary ambitions, which had been quashed by the bemus.e.m.e.nt of his mother and utter lack of encouragement from his father. Yet now he became more infected than ever with the dream of becoming an acclaimed dramatist -- and for that he needed to search out philosophical topics and devise grand commentaries on the human condition. Forsaking Robinson Crusoe Robinson Crusoe and and Swiss Family Robinson Swiss Family Robinson, Verne turned to Voltaire and Balzac, Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, reveling in their hot-blooded romanticism.

One day, waving a ticket that a sick friend had given him, Verne found a seat in the audience of the National a.s.sembly, where a case was being argued. A publisher had been arrested and his newspaper, La Presse La Presse, forcibly suspended by the government. For Verne, the main attraction was when the great novelist Victor Hugo rose to speak with great pa.s.sion for the cause of freedom of speech.

As a celebrity, Hugo had been elected as a deputy of the National a.s.sembly. ”He may as well serve his country,” one of Verne's aspiring-writer friends had commented sarcastically. ”It's been ten years since he published anything new.” Then the students had begun to argue about whether Hugo could ever surpa.s.s his literary masterpiece, The Hunchback of Notre Dame The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Verne hoped that with great minds such as Victor Hugo's in the Second Republic -- and the election of the enlightened Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon -- Paris and France would finally embark upon a long period of stability and prosperity.

He paid little attention to either politics or rhetoric at the a.s.sembly, but instead nudged closer to the great Hugo. The man turned and met Verne's eyes for the briefest of instants, which would keep the young man in happy delirium for an entire week. . . .

Mulling over these thoughts as he left the National a.s.sembly, Verne found a few sous in his pocket, enough for one day's food. But he walked past the fruit carts and bakery baskets and stopped instead at a book shop. There, he found the romances of Sir Walter Scott in thirteen volumes, a collection of the poetry of Racine -- and, in a single magnificent tome, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Verne counted the coins in the palm of his hand, studying the prices of the books. A person had to have priorities, after all. After d.i.c.kering with the vendor, he settled on an amount. Verne walked home, penniless and still hungry . . . but carrying the book of Shakespeare.

He considered it a better investment of his money than mere food.

iv

Nemo was a stranger in a world where no human being had ever set foot.

Misty swamps spread out in the lost landscape, inhabited by strange and forgotten creatures. The ceiling of the incredible grotto became a sky of stone high above. Stalact.i.tes blurred in the distance, as far away as clouds, lit by a strange bright smear like a surrogate sun.