e, has been worked out for several months past by the most
eminent men. To-day it is finished; it is final. It is complete in all
its details. Does it interest you? (_On all sides: 'Read it, read it.'_)
You will see that with discipline, patience, and courage--yes, courage,
I risk this evil-sounding word (_'Risk it, risk it.'_)--and above all,
with the aid of that splendid heritage of science and art which comes to
us from the past, for which we are accountable to the most distant of
our descendants, to the boundless universe, and I was going to say, to
God (_signs of surprise_), we can be saved if we will." (_Thunder of
applause_.)

The speaker next entered into lengthy details, which it is useless to
reproduce here, on the Neo-troglodytism which he pretended to inaugurate
as the acme of civilisation, "which had," said he, "began with caves,
and was destined to return to these subterranean retreats, but at a far
deeper level." He displayed designs, quantities and drawings. He had no
trouble in proving that, on condition of burrowing sufficiently deep
into the ground below, they would find a deliciously gentle warmth, an
Elysian temperature. It would be enough to excavate, enlarge, heighten,
and extend the galleries of already existing mines in order to render
them habitable and comfortable into the bargain. The electric light,
supplied entirely without expense by the scattered centres of the fire
within, would provide for the magnificent illumination both by day and
night of these colossal crypts, these marvellous cloisters, indefinitely
extended and embellished by successive generations. With a good system
of ventilation, all danger of suffocation or of foulness of air would be
avoided. In short, after a more or less long period of settling in,
civilised life could unfold anew in all its intellectual, artistic, and
fashionable splendour, as freely as it did in the capricious and
intermittent light or natural day, and even perhaps more surely. At
these last words, the Princess Lydia broke her fan, by dint of
applauding. An objection then came from the right, "With what shall we
be fed?" Miltiades smiled disdainfully and replied: "Nothing is simpler.
For ordinary drinking purposes we first of all shall have melted ice.
Every day we shall transport enormous blocks of it in order to keep the
orifices of the crypts free from obstruction, and to supply the public
fountains. I may add that chemists undertake to manufacture al