Summary

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Twenty-Third… (1873)

May he pay for me the debt of gratitude that I owe to you!"
"You must still hope," replied Kennedy. "This is but a passing fit of weakness. You will not die. How could any one die on this beautiful summer night?"
"Death is at hand," replied the missionary, "I know it! Let me look it in the face! Death, the commencement of things eternal, is but the end of earthly cares. Place me upon my knees, my brethren, I beseech you!"
Kennedy lifted him up, and it was distressing to see his weakened limbs bend under him.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Twenty-Third… (1873)

Would you yield to the thirst for gold? Has not this dead man whom you have just helped to bury, taught you the vanity of human affairs?"
"All that is true," replied Joe, "but gold! Mr. Kennedy, won't you help to gather up a trifle of all these millions?"
"What could we do with them, Joe?" said the hunter, unable to repress a smile. "We did not come hither in search of fortune, and we cannot take one home with us."
"The millions are rather heavy, you know," resumed the doctor, "and cannot very easily be put into one's pocket."
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Jules Verne Jules Verne Five Weeks in a Balloon — Chapter Twenty-Third… (1873)

Do you know, now, in what kind of soil that man of self-denial, that poor one in spirit, has just been buried?"
"No! what do you mean, doctor?"
"That priest, who took the oath of perpetual poverty, now reposes in a gold-mine!"
"A gold-mine!" exclaimed Kennedy and Joe in one breath.
"Yes, a gold-mine," said the doctor, quietly. "Those blocks which you are trampling under foot, like worthless stones, contain gold-ore of great purity."
"Impossible! impossible!" repeated Joe.
Source: Wikisource

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