Jules Verne

“ Antekirtt chosen as a dwelling-place? There are islands by hundreds, islets by thousands on the periplus of this immense basin. One would seek in vain to count its capes and coves. How many people of different race, customs and political state throng forward to this seaboard, where the story of humanity has left its imprint for more than twenty centuries past—Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Austrians, Ottomans, Greeks, Arabians, Egyptians, Tripolitans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccoans, even Englishmen, at Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus. ”

“ THE MEDITERRANEAN.
“The Mediterranean is beautiful above all in two respects—harmonious setting and transparency of light and atmosphere. Such as it is, it is an admirable temperer of man. It gives him a hard, unyielding strength: it produces the most substantial races.” ”

“ With substantial, yet judicious diet, the invalid recovered his strength perceptibly from day to day. The doctor visited him often, and conversed with him upon no subjects save those in which he was most interested. And Pierre, not wishing to provoke premature confidence, waited until it should please him to give it.
Point Pescade had always faithfully reported to the doctor the fragments of conversation exchanged by himself and his patient. Evidently the incognito, which covered not only Mathias Sandorf, but even the island he inhabited, quite engrossed Pierre Bathory. ”

“ For, in truth, evaporation carries off from this sea three times as much water as is furnished it by tributary rivers, and in default of this Atlantic inflow—which, diffusing itself through the strait, regenerates it—it would have been these many centuries back no more than a kind of Dead Sea, instead of the Living Sea, par excellence. ”

“ Again and again Pierre almost succumbed. Doubly injured, in mind and body, he was so near to death that he did not recognize Sandorf at his bedside. He had not even strength to whisper Sava's name.
But skillful care prevailed and the reaction began.
Youth gained the mastery. The sick man was cured in body before he was cured in mind. His wound began to heal, his lungs regained their normal powers, and on the 17th of July the doctor knew that Pierre was saved. ”

“ But his life was wellnigh spent, and now it had to be revived. It was a difficult task, and required the most minute care and all the resources of the medical art. The doctor must not fail.
“He will live. I must have him live,” he repeated.
“Ah, why at Cattaro did I not act on my first idea? Why did the arrival of Sarcany at Ragusa prevent my snatching him from that accursed town? But I'll save him. In the time to come Pierre Bathory will be Mathias Sandorfs right hand.”
And for fifteen years to punish and reward had been the constant thought of Dr. Antekirtt. ”