The Saint Michel
so universally, Verne has already become a myth. Legends have gathered around his form. In Germany writers have ponderously explained—and believed—that he was not a Frenchman at all, but a Jew, a native of Russian Poland. They gave him a birthplace, in the town of Plock, and a name, Olshewitz, of which Vergne or Verne was only a French translation, since both words mean the alder tree. In Italy about 1886 the report became widespread that he was dead, or rather that he had never lived, that he was only a name used in common by an entire syndicate of authors, who contributed their best works and best efforts to popularize the series of books whose profits they shared in common. Even in France itself men learned to say, for the sake of the antithesis, that this, the greatest of all writers of travel, had gained all his knowledge out of books and never himself had traveled beyond Amiens.
Lest to American readers also, the man, the truly lovable man, Verne, should become wholly lost behind his books, let us make brief record of him here. He was born in Nantes, the chief city of
xiii
