Or velocity sufficient to reach the neutral point being wanting, it would fall back on the earth by virtue of the excess of terrestrial attraction over lunar attraction. Or lastly, endowed with sufficient velocity to reach the neutral point, but insufficient to pass it, it would remain eternally suspended in the same place, like the pretended coffin of Mahomet, between the zenith and nadir. Such was the situation, and Barbicane clearly explained the consequences to his travelling companions. They were interested to the highest degree. How were they to know when they had reached this neutral point, situated at 78,114 leagues from the earth, at the precise moment when neither they nor the objects contained in the projectile should be in any way subject to the laws of weight? Until now the travellers, though they had remarked that this action diminished little by little, had not yet perceived its total absence. But that day, about 11 a.m., Nicholl having let a tumbler escape from his hand, instead of falling, it remained suspended in the air. "Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "this is a little amusing chemistry!" And immediately different objects, weapons, bottles, &c, left to themselves, hung suspended as if by miracle. Diana, too, lifted up by Michel into space, reproduced, but without trickery, the marvellous suspensions effected by Robert-Houdin and Maskelyne and Cook. The three adventurous companions, surprised and stupefied in spite of their scientific reasoning, carried into the domain of the marvellous, felt weight go out of their bodies. When they stretched out their arms they felt no inclination to drop them. Their heads vacillated on their shoulders. Their feet no longer kept at the bottom of the projectile. They were like staggering drunkards. Imagination has created men deprived of their reflection, others deprived of their shadows! But here reality, by the neutrality of active forces, made men in whom nothing had any weight, and who weighed nothing themselves. Suddenly Michel, making a slight spring, left the floor and remained suspended in the air like the good monk in Murillo's _Cuisine des Anges_. His two friends joined him in an instant, and all three, in the centre of the projectile, figured a miraculous ascension. "Is it believable? Is it likely? Is it possible?" cried Michel. "No. And yet it exists! Ah! if Raphael could have seen us like this what an Assumption he could have put upon canvas!" "The Assumption cannot last," answered Barbicane. "If the projectile passes the neutral point, the lunar attraction will draw us to the moon." "Then our feet will rest upon the roof of the projectile,' answered Michel. "No," said Barbicane, "because the centre of gravity in the projectile is very low, and it will turn over gradually." "Then all our things will be turned upside down for certain!"