My agitation redoubled. My pulse beat violently.
I could not remain quiet. I went and came, hoping to calm
my troubled spirit by constant movement. The idea of failure
in our bold enterprise was the least painful of my anxieties;
but the thought of seeing our project discovered before
leaving the Nautilus, of being brought before Captain Nemo,
irritated, or (what was worse) saddened, at my desertion,
made my heart beat.
I wanted to see the saloon for the last time. I descended the stairs and
arrived in the museum, where I had passed so many useful and agreeable hours.
I looked at all its riches, all its treasures, like a man on the eve of an
eternal exile, who was leaving never to return.
These wonders of Nature, these masterpieces of art, amongst which for so many
days my life had been concentrated, I was going to abandon them for ever!
I should like to have taken a last look through the windows of the saloon into
the waters of the Atlantic: but the panels were hermetically closed, and a
cloak of steel separated me from that ocean which I had not yet explored.
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