"Ah, savants!" cried Michel; "and what are either the one or the other to us from the moment we know that they equally lead us into infinite space?
Barbicane and Nicholl could not forbear smiling.They had just been creating "art for art's sake."Never had so idle a question been raised at such an inopportune moment. The sinister truth remained that,whether hyperbolically or parabolically borne away,the projectile would never again meet either the earth or the moon.