Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.

THE ENEMY TO BE STARVED INTO SUBMISSION

"He is gone!" cried Martha, running out of her kitchen at the noiseof the violent slamming of doors.

"Yes," I replied, "completely gone."

"Well; and how about his dinner?" said the old 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. No one in the house is toeat anything at all. Uncle Liedenbrock is going to make us all fastuntil he has succeeded in deciphering an undecipherable scrawl."

"Oh, my dear! must we then all die of hunger?"

I hardly dared to confess that, with so absolute a ruler as my uncle,this fate was inevitable.

The old servant, visibly moved, returned to the kitchen, moaningpiteously.

When I was alone, I thought I would go and tell Gräuben all about it.But how should I be able to escape from the house? The Professormight return at any moment. And suppose he called me? And suppose hetackled me again with this logomachy, which might vainly have beenset before ancient Oedipus. And if I did not obey his call, who couldanswer for what might happen?

The wisest course was to remain where I was. A mineralogist atBesançon had just sent us a collection of siliceous nodules, which Ihad to classify: so I set to work; I sorted, labelled, and arrangedin their own glass case all these hollow specimens, in the cavity ofeach of which was a nest of little crystals.

But this work did not succeed in absorbing all my attention. That olddocument kept working in my brain. My head throbbed with excitement,and I felt an undefined uneasiness. I was possessed with apresentiment of coming evil.

In an hour my nodules were all arranged upon successive shelves. ThenI dropped down into the old velvet arm-chair, my head thrown back andmy hands joined over it. I lighted my long crooked pipe, with apainting on it of an idle-looking naiad; then I amused myselfwatching the process of the conversion of the tobacco into carbon,which was by slow degrees making my naiad into a negress. Now andthen I listened to hear whether a well-known step was on the stairs.No. Where could my uncle be at that moment? I fancied him runningunder the noble trees which line the road to Altona, gesticulating,making shots with his cane, thrashing the long grass, cutting theheads off the thistles, and disturbing the contemplative storks intheir peaceful solitude.

Would he return in triumph or in discouragement? Which would get theupper hand, he or the secret? I was thus asking myself questions, andmechanically taking between my fingers the sheet of papermysteriously disfigured with the incomprehensible succession ofletters I had written down; and I repeated to myself "What does itall mean?"

I sought to group the letters so as to