J.T.Maston alone uttered the words:-- "That's an idea!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," answered the major, "but if people have such ideas as that they ought not to think of putting them into execution." "Why not ?" quickly answered the secretary of the Gun Club, ready for an argument.

But the subject was let drop.
In the meantime Michel Ardan's name was already going about Tampa Town.
Strangers and natives talked and joked together, not about the European--evidently a mythical personage--but about J.T.Maston, who had the folly to believe in his existence.

When Barbicane proposed to send a projectile to the moon every one thought the enterprise natural and practicable--a simple affair of ballistics.

But that a reasonable being should offer to go the journey inside the projectile was a farce, or, to use a familiar Americanism, it was all "humbug." This laughter lasted till evening throughout the Union, an unusual thing in a country where any impossible enterprise finds adepts and partisans.
Still Michel Ardan's proposition did not fail to awaken a certain emotion in many minds.

"They had not thought of such a thing." How many things denied one day had become realities the next! Why should not this journey be accomplished one day or another?
But, any way, the man who would run such a risk must be a madman, and certainly, as his project could not be taken seriously, he would have done better to be quiet about it, instead of troubling a whole population with such ridiculous trash.
But, first of all, did this personage really exist?
That was the great question.