“If I wish it!” exclaimed Rosette. “Nothing of the sort! Of course a year must have twelve months!”
“Of course,” said the captain.
“And how many days will make a month?” asked the professor.
“I suppose sixty or sixty-two, as the case may be. The days now are only half as long as they used to be,” answered the captain.
“Servadac, don’t be thoughtless!” cried Rosette, with all the petulant impatience of the old pedagogue. “If the days are only half as long as they were, sixty of them cannot make up a twelfth part of Gallia’s year—cannot be a month.”
“I suppose not,” replied the confused captain.
“Do you not see, then,” continued the astronomer, “that if a Gallian month is twice as long as a terrestrial month, and a Gallian day is only half as long as a terrestrial day, there must be a hundred and twenty days in every month?”
“No doubt you are right, professor,” said Count Timascheff; “but do you not think that the use of a new calendar such as this would practically be very troublesome?”
“Not at all! not at all! I do not intend to use any other,” was the professor’s bluff reply.
After pondering for a few moments, the captain spoke again. “According, then, to this new calendar, it isn’t the middle of May at all; it must now be some time in March.”