advance was received the good orderly
never divulged, but henceforward he maintained the firm conviction that
there was something very much amiss up in the sky.

To Servadac and his friends this continual disquietude and ill-humor on
the part of the professor occasioned no little anxiety. From what, they
asked, could his dissatisfaction arise? They could only conjecture that
he had discovered some flaw in his reckonings; and if this were so,
might there not be reason to apprehend that their anticipations of
coming into contact with the earth, at the settled time, might all be
falsified?

Day followed day, and still there was no cessation of the professor's
discomposure. He was the most miserable of mortals. If really his
calculations and his observations were at variance, this, in a man of
his irritable temperament, would account for his perpetual perturbation.
But he entered into no explanation; he only climbed up to his telescope,
looking haggard and distressed, and when compelled by the frost to
retire, he would make his way back to his study more furious than ever.
At times he was heard giving vent to his vexation. "Confound it! what
does it mean? what is she doing? All behind! Is Newton a fool? Is the
law of universal gravitation the law of universal nonsense?" And the
little man would seize his head in both his hands, and tear away at the
scanty locks which he could ill afford to lose.

Enough was overheard to confirm the suspicion that there was some
irreconcilable discrepancy between the results of his computation and
what he had actually observed; and yet, if he had been called upon to
say, he would have sooner insisted that there was derangement in
the laws of celestial mechanism, than have owned there was the least
probability of error in any of his own calculations. Assuredly, if the
poor professor had had any flesh to lose he would have withered away to
a shadow.

But this state of things was before long to come to an end. On the 12th,
Ben Zoof, who was hanging about outside the great hall of the cavern,
heard the professor inside utter a loud cry. Hurrying in to ascertain
the cause, he found Rosette in a state of perfect frenzy, in which
ecstasy and rage seemed to be struggling for the predominance.

"Eureka! Eureka!" yelled the excited astronomer.

"What, in the name of peace, do you mean?" bawled Ben Zoof, in
open-mouthed amazement.

"Eureka!" again shrieked the little man.

"How? What? Where?"