I admit that I forgot my dignity and I forgot the affectation he had
steadily assumed of talking only to Morhange.
"You will pardon me, sir, if your discourse interests me more than I
had anticipated. But you know very well that I lack the fundamental
instruction necessary to understand you. You speak of the dynasty of
Neptune. What is this dynasty, from which, I believe, you trace the
descent of Antinea? What is her rôle in the story of Atlantis?"
M. Le Mesge smiled with condescension, meantime winking at Morhange
with the eye nearest to him. Morhange was listening without
expression, without a word, chin in hand, elbow on knee.
"Plato will answer for me, sir," said the Professor.
And he added, with an accent of inexpressible pity:
"Is it really possible that you have never made the acquaintance of
the introduction to the Critias?"
He placed on the table the book by which Morhange had been so
strangely moved. He adjusted his spectacles and began to read. It
seemed as if the magic of Plato vibrated through and transfigured this
ridiculous little old man.
"'Having drawn by lot the different parts of the earth, the gods
obtained, some a larger, and some, a smaller share. It was thus that
Neptune, having received in the division the isle of Atlantis, came to
place the children he had had by a mortal in one part of that isle.
It was not far from the sea, a plain situated in the midst of the
isle, the most beautiful, and, they say, the most fertile of plains.
About fifty stades from that plain, in the middle of the isle, was a
mountain. There dwelt one of those men who, in the very beginning, was
born of the Earth, Evenor, with his wife, Leucippe. They had only one
daughter, Clito. She was marriageable when her mother and father died,
and Neptune, being enamored of her, married her. Neptune fortified the
mountain where she dwelt by isolating it. He made alternate girdles of
sea and land, the one smaller, the others greater, two of earth and
three of water, and centered them round the isle in such a manner that
they were at all parts equally distant!..."