o the value of several rubles. With a
greediness that could not be concealed, Hakkabut grasped them all.
Paper, indeed, they were; but the cunning Israelite knew that they would
in any case be security far beyond the value of his cash. He was making
some eighteen hundred per cent. interest, and accordingly chuckled
within himself at his unexpected stroke of business.

The professor pocketed his French coins with a satisfaction far more
demonstrative. "Gentlemen," he said, "with these franc pieces I obtain
the means of determining accurately both a meter and a kilogramme."

CHAPTER VII. GALLIA WEIGHED

A quarter of an hour later, the visitors to the _Hansa_ had reassembled
in the common hall of Nina's Hive.

"Now, gentlemen, we can proceed," said the professor. "May I request
that this table may be cleared?"

Ben Zoof removed the various articles that were lying on the table, and
the coins which had just been borrowed from the Jew were placed upon it
in three piles, according to their value.

The professor commenced. "Since none of you gentlemen, at the time
of the shock, took the precaution to save either a meter measure or
a kilogramme weight from the earth, and since both these articles are
necessary for the calculation on which we are engaged, I have been
obliged to devise means of my own to replace them."

This exordium delivered, he paused and seemed to watch its effect
upon his audience, who, however, were too well acquainted with the
professor's temper to make any attempt to exonerate themselves from the
rebuke of carelessness, and submitted silently to the implied reproach.

"I have taken pains," he continued, "to satisfy myself that these
coins are in proper condition for my purpose. I find them unworn and
unchipped; indeed, they are almost new. They have been hoarded instead
of circulated; accordingly, they are fit to be utilized for my purpose
of obtaining the precise length of a terrestrial meter."

Ben Zoof looked on in perplexity, regarding the lecturer with much the
same curiosity as he would have watched the performances of a traveling
mountebank at a fair in Montmartre; but Servadac and his two friends had
already divined the professor's meaning. They knew that French coinage
is all decimal, the franc being the standard of which the other coins,
whether gold, silver, or copper, are multiples or measures; they knew,
too, that the caliber or diameter of each piece of money is rigorously
de