"I would also like, in these notes, to pay homage to that man of incommensurable genius, namely Jules Verne. My admiration for him is boundless. In certain pages of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Five Weeks in a Balloon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon, The Mysterious Island and Hector Servadac, he raised himself to the highest peaks that can be attained by human language. [...] O incomparable master, may you be blessed for the sublime hours which I have spent endlessly reading and rereading your works through my life."