CHAPTER VII.

A WOMAN'S COURAGE

Thus ended this memorable seance. That conversation threw me into a
fever. I came out of my uncle's study as if I had been stunned, and
as if there was not air enough in all the streets of Hamburg to put
me right again. I therefore made for the banks of the Elbe, where the
steamer lands her passengers, which forms the communication between
the city and the Hamburg railway.

Was I convinced of the truth of what I had heard? Had I not bent
under the iron rule of the Professor Liedenbrock? Was I to believe
him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this
massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a
lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where
did truth stop? Where did error begin?

I was all adrift amongst a thousand contradictory hypotheses, but I
could not lay hold of one.

Yet I remembered that I had been convinced, although now my
enthusiasm was beginning to cool down; but I felt a desire to start
at once, and not to lose time and courage by calm reflection. I had
at that moment quite courage enough to strap my knapsack to my
shoulders and start.

But I must confess that in another hour this unnatural excitement
abated, my nerves became unstrung, and from the depths of the abysses