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“A dreary future,” Verne said bitterly. He bent to pick up a heavy box and helped to load it into the carriage, which already looked so stuffed the axles might bow to the gravel in the road. “I want to be a writer like you.”

Dumas rumbled a great belly laugh. “Even now, when you see how my fortunes have fallen? Oh, ho!”

“But I’ve read your work, Monsieur Dumas. Surely your fiction has created a treasure for humanity far beyond” -- Verne gestured around the carriage house, but indicated the whole estate -- “beyond all this.”

Dumas frowned at him. “At the moment, I’d gladly give up my novels if I could only retain possession of my home.” The footman finished harnessing the horse and then climbed up to the buckboard. The great writer’s single faithful employee would also drive the carriage.

Verne hung his head, astounded at the famous man’s misfortune. His dreams for success had shattered into even smaller pieces. “I just wish my own fictions were more in demand. I haven’t managed to capture the excitement as you have. My historical novels don’t have the spark of life or the sense of wonder that you portrayed in The Three Musketeers.”

Dumas beamed at hearing the praise, even at such a moment. “Ho! And I will continue to write books like that, mark my words -- though I may have to rely solely on my own imagination from now on, as it seems I’ll have considerable difficulty hiring other writers.”

The big man opened the carriage door. “Every author is different, Jules. I have a flair for portraying historical charm, but if I were to devote my talents to the sort of stories that come from the pens of Voltaire or Balzac, I would fail miserably. Oh, ho! Jules, you have been working too hard to do what I have done. Perhaps historical adventure isn’t where your special ability lies.”

“Then what should I write about?” Verne said with an edge of desperation. He still hadn’t heard any answers he could use.

“Write what you know, what you have learned, what you have lived. Write what is in your heart.” Dumas looked at one of the laden sacks on the floor of the carriage house. With a grunt, he picked it up and tossed it onto the seat, the only clear spot wide enough for the writer’s enormous buttocks.

Verne drew a heavy sigh. “But my life has been tedious and uninteresting. No one would want to read about my experiences. What am I to do?”

With great effort, Dumas heaved himself into the carriage, grabbed the heavy sack, and subsided into the seat with the sack on his lap. Eager to help, Verne trotted across the dirt floor and opened the doors of the carriage house. The footman flicked the reins, and the horse stamped, impatient to be off.

Dumas raised his eyebrows, looking out the carriage window. “What about your friend Nemo? When you told me about his adventures, there was excitement in your eyes -- a fire. Delicious! You have the journal from when he was stranded on his island, correct? Certainly those are tales worth retelling?”

As if struck by a thunderbolt from the sky, Verne stepped back and his face lit up. Of course! He needed only to tell the adventures -- not necessarily experience them himself.

Dumas swung the carriage door shut. “I hope to see you again someday, Jules Verne,” he said through the window. “But now I must be off on . . . pressing business as far away from here as I can get.”

“But how am I to find you?” Verne said. “I’d like to send you a new manuscript. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

Dumas leaned out the window of his carriage. “My dear man, at the moment my object is not to be found.” The footman snapped a whip at the horse, and the vehicle rattled onto the cobbled path and out a side driveway. They fled toward a winding forest road that would eventually meet the main thoroughfare.

While his once-magnificent estate was ransacked, Dumas left Verne behind with his creditors . . . and his new ideas.

iv

Like a mythical air spirit robed in green, red, and blue, the immense balloon drifted across Africa for two more weeks.

Fergusson spent the daylight hours in scientific ecstasy, documenting