"You are an apt pupil." "Say that again," said Ardan.

"I want Mac to hear it." Barbican humored him by repeating the observation, but M'Nicholl would only notice it by a grunt of doubtful meaning.
"Was Galileo tolerably successful in his calculations ?" asked Ardan, resuming the conversation.
Before answering this question, Barbican unrolled the map of the Moon, which a faint light like that of day-break now enabled him to examine.
He then went on: "Galileo was wonderfully successful--considering that the telescope which he employed was a poor instrument of his own construction, magnifying only thirty times.

He gave the lunar mountains a height of about 26,000 feet--an altitude cut down by Hevelius, but almost doubled by Riccioli.

Herschel was the first to come pretty close to the truth, but Beer and Maedler, whose _Mappa Selenographica_ now lies before us, have left really nothing more to be done for lunar astronomy--except, of course, to pay a personal visit to the Moon--which we have tried to do, but I fear with a very poor prospect of success." "Cheer up! cheer up!" cried Ardan.

"It's not all over yet by long odds.
Who can say what is still in store for us?
Another bolide may shunt us off our ellipse and even send us to the Moon's surface." Then seeing Barbican shake his head ominously and his countenance become more and more depressed, this true friend tried to brighten him up a bit by feigning to take deep interest in a subject that to him was absolutely the driest in the world.
"Meer and Baedler--I mean Beer and Maedler," he went on, "must have measured at least forty or fifty mountains to their satisfaction." "Forty or fifty!" exclaimed Barbican.