Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 13.djvu/22

2 ''young French engineer, a man, a gentleman, and a scientist. Verne has drawn few better characters than this of Victor Cyprien. Though perhaps one may be permitted to suggest that Cyprien's altruism is scarcely convincing. The love which twice surrenders its beloved, rather than transgress the conventions of a social world with which neither lover is any longer associated, seems to us a rather feeble one. The indifference to wealth which, while watching other men gather diamonds all around, can only puzzle over their desire, and be contemptuous of their madness, is as little French as it is American.'' ''The easy deception of the engineer into the idea that he has manufactured a giant diamond, may be accepted by the not too critical reader as the necessary foundation of the story, which is certainly bright, mystifying, and interesting in the extreme. Africa had been treated so seriously in the earlier tales, that one is glad to find Verne here playing with it in the scenes where his people ride ostriches and giraffes. are borne aloft by trapped birds, and leave the manufacture of their artificial diamonds to dodge one another murderously across country.'' ''As to "The Purchase of the North Pole" (1889), or as Verne himself 'first called it literally "Sense Upside Down," it is a sequel to " A Trip to the Moon" written a quarter century before. In its mathematical sincerity and extravagance of analysis it is worthy of the earlier tale. With his mountains of figures the author deliberately plays a joke upon the trusting reader, by pointing out in the end that the figures are all wrong. In its astronomical suggestiveness and impressive form of conveying instruction, this story is again the equal of its predecessor.''