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"

"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

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