"No, my dear Martha, he will eat no more. No one in the house is to
eat anything at all. Uncle Liedenbrock is going to make us all fast
until 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, moaning
piteously.

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

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

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