most proud and contented of philosophers; his pride and contentment
were both overshadowed by the certainty that the career of his comet was
destined to be so transient, and that it must inevitably once again come
into collision with the earth.

CHAPTER IX MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA

"All right!" said Servadac, convinced by the professor's ill humor that
the danger was past; "no doubt we are in for a two years' excursion, but
fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!"

"And we shall see Montmartre again!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited
tones that betrayed his delight in the anticipation.

To use a nautical expression, they had safely "rounded the point," and
they had to be congratulated on their successful navigation; for if,
under the influence of Jupiter's attraction, the comet had been retarded
for a single hour, in that hour the earth would have already traveled
2,300,000 miles from the point where contact would ensue, and many
centuries would elapse before such a coincidence would possibly again
occur.

On the 1st of November Gallia and Jupiter were 40,000,000 miles apart.
It was little more than ten weeks to the 15th of January, when the
comet would begin to re-approach the sun. Though light and heat were now
reduced to a twenty-fifth part of their terrestrial intensity, so that
a perpetual twilight seemed to have settled over Gallia, yet the
population felt cheered even by the little that was left, and buoyed
up by the hope that they should ultimately regain their proper position
with regard to the great luminary, of which the temperature has been
estimated as not less than 5,000,000 degrees.

Of the anxiety endured during the last two months Isaac Hakkabut had
known nothing. Since the day he had done his lucky stroke of business he
had never left the tartan; and after Ben Zoof, on the following day, had
returned the steelyard and the borrowed cash, receiving back the paper
roubles deposited, all communication between the Jew and Nina's Hive had
ceased. In the course of the few minutes' conversation which Ben Zoof
had held with him, he had mentioned that he knew that the whole soil of
Gallia was made of gold; but the old man, guessing that the orderly was
only laughing at him as usual, paid no attention to the remark, and only
meditated upon the means he could devise to get every bit of the money
in the new world into his own possession. No one grieved over the
life of solitude which Hakkabut