tone:--

"There is not one of you, brave colleagues, who has not seen the moon,
or, at least, heard of It. Do not be astonished if I wish to speak to
you about the Queen of Night. It is, perhaps, our lot to be the
Columbuses of this unknown world. Understand me, and second me as much
as you can, I will lead you to its conquest, and its name shall be
joined to those of the thirty-six States that form the grand country of
the Union!"

"Hurrah for the moon!" cried the Gun Club with one voice.

"The moon has been much studied," resumed Barbicane; "its mass, density,
weight, volume, constitution, movements, distance, the part it plays in
the solar world, are all perfectly determined; selenographic maps have
been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, those
of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs of
incomparable beauty--in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics,
astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; but
until now no direct communication with it has ever been established."

A violent movement of interest and surprise welcomed this sentence of
the orator.

"Allow me," he resumed, "to recall to you in few words how certain
ardent minds, embarked upon imaginary journeys, pretended to have
penetrated the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth century a
certain David Fabricius boasted of having seen the inhabitants of the
moon with his own eyes. In 1649 a Frenchman, Jean Baudoin, published his
_Journey to the Moon by Dominique Gonzales, Spanish Adventurer_. At the