"I follow you, uncle. But do you think people will come?"
"Will they come? What! You, who know, ask me that question! Why, they will pay gold for the worst seat, they'll give a king's ransom to get in! I'm so sure of it that I shall put all I have left, the last remnant of my savings, into the business. And within a year I shall have amassed incalculable wealth."
"The place is quite small, uncle, and you will have only a limited number of seats."
"A thousand, a thousand seats, comfortably! At two hundred francs a seat to begin with, at a thousand francs! . . ."
"I say, uncle! Seats in the open air, exposed to the rain, to the cold, to all sorts of weather!"
"I've foreseen that objection. The Yard will be closed on rainy days. I want bright daylight, sunshine, the action of the light and other conditions besides, which will still further decrease the number of demonstrations. But that doesn't matter: each seat will cost two thousand francs, five thousand francs, if necessary! I tell you, there's no limit! No one will be content to die without having been to Noël Dorgeroux's Yard! Why, Victorien, you know it as well as I do! When all is said, the reality is more extraordinary than anything that you can imagine, even after what you have seen with your own eyes."
I could not help asking him:
"Then there are fresh manifestations?"
He replied by nodding his head:
"It's not so much that they're new," he said, "as that, above all, they have enabled me, with the factors which I already possess, to probe the truth to the bottom."