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The readers of the magazine serialization, though, were most captivated by the brooding and mysterious Captain Nemo, an angry and impassioned man who had isolated himself from the world, divorced his very existence from human society. Verne’s intent had been to make him a dour, driven fellow, consumed with the fires of vengeance, scarred by some terrible (and unspecified) event in his past -- yet the public loved him for his dark passion. They saw Nemo as a romantic hero, an enigma that captured their imaginations.

Verne accepted the accolades with good grace, though at home with Honorine he remained perplexed. Even after years of total absence, Nemo still managed to steal Jules Verne’s thunder. What is it about the man?

In the novel, Captain Nemo took Professor Aronnax prisoner, along with the blustery Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, and the professor’s faithful manservant, Conseil. The three accompanied Nemo on a remarkable voyage to underwater volcanoes, sunken cities, seaweed gardens, and polar icecaps. At the end, the three captives managed to flee just before the Nautilus was lost in a terrible maelstrom off the coast of Norway.

In writing the novel, Verne had exorcised his own demons, his jealousy for the man who had done so many of the things Verne had denied himself. The magnificent sub-marine and Captain Nemo himself were both gone, sucked down into a water vortex, never to return. Verne had felt satisfied, and it was a grand ending.

Caroline, though, was outraged.

She pounded on the door of the flat while Verne was still locked in his private office. When Honorine let her in, Caroline looked appraisingly at Verne’s wife, and then marched toward the closed door of the writer’s study.

Honorine tried to stop her, but Caroline flung the door open and stood like a valkyrie in the doorway, her russet-gold hair in disarray. Verne turned around, astonished to see her, his face lighting with a surprised smile until her enraged expression registered on him. He faltered. “Caroline! Uh . . . Madame Hatteras, to what do I owe --”

“Jules, how could you do this?” Caroline’s bright blue eyes flashed with anger. By the sweat on her brow and the rumpled appearance of her clothes, he guessed that she had marched all the way from her shipping offices on the left bank of the Seine.

Honorine hovered in the background, wearing an expression of stern reproof. “Jules, what is it? Who is this woman?”

In all the years he’d been in Paris, Verne had never introduced Honorine and Caroline. At the moment, however, it did not seem to be an appropriate time. He blushed and sweated, brushing his wife away. “Honorine, would you give us a moment of privacy, please?”

Confused but willing to obey her husband, Honorine retreated to the other rooms and busied herself with housework that Verne would never understand.

“So . . . you must have read my new novel?” he asked Caroline disingenuously, then flashed a nervous grin. “Did you see how I --”

Caroline slammed down her own copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It made a crack like thunder on his desk. “You used my name! You used André’s. You made up this preposterous adventure . . . and then you killed him. Why? To get even with him for some imagined insult -- or to get even with me? How could you do that? Nemo was your friend.”

“But --” Verne said, flustered. He leaned back in his chair, swallowed hard, and scratched his beard, at a loss. He searched over the newspaper clippings and scientific journals in front of him, as if he might find an answer among the summaries in his collection. “I have often used names and experiences from my real life.” He sat up, gaining conviction. “As you well know, I used your own lost husband as a hero in Captain Hatteras. You didn’t complain then.”

She stood, fuming. “Because I did not care about him, Jules. What did it matter? But André . . . André --”

Verne’s heart fell like a stone, and he stared at his notes on the desktop. In a brisk gesture, she swept away the