They breakfasted, therefore, at 2 a.m., but the hour was not of much consequence.  Michel served up his habitual menu, crowned by an amiable bottle out of his secret cellar.  If ideas did not come into their heads the Chambertin of 1863 must be despaired of.

The meal over, observations began again.

The objects they had thrown out of the projectile still followed it at the same invariable distance.  It was evident that the bullet in its movement of translation round the moon had not passed through any atmosphere, for the specific weight of these objects would have modified their respective distances.

There was nothing to see on the side of the terrestrial globe.  The earth was only a day old, having been new at midnight the day before, and two days having to go by before her crescent, disengaged from the solar rays, could serve as a clock to the Selenites, as in her movement of rotation each of her points always passes the same meridian of the moon every twenty-four hours.

The spectacle was a different one on the side of the moon; the orb was shining in all its splendour amidst innumerable constellations, the rays of which could not trouble its purity.  Upon the disc the plains again wore the sombre tint which is seen from the earth.  The rest of the nimbus was shining, and amidst the general blaze Tycho stood out like a sun.

Barbicane could not manage any way to appreciate the velocity of the projectile, but reasoning demonstrated that this speed must be uniformly diminishing in conformity with the laws of rational mechanics.

In fact, it being admitted that the bullet would describe an orbit round the moon, that orbit must necessarily be elliptical.  Science proves that it must be thus.  No mobile circulation round any body is an exception to that law.  All the orbits described in space are elliptical, those of satellites round their planets, those of planets around their sun, that of the sun round the unknown orb that serves as its central pivot.  Why should the projectile of the Gun Club escape that natural arrangement?

Now in elliptical orbits attracting bodies always occupy one of the foci of the ellipsis.  The satellite is, therefore, nearer the body round which it gravitates at one moment than it is at another.  When the earth is nearest the sun she is at her perihelion, and at her aphelion when most distant.  The moon is nearest the earth at her perigee, and most distant at her apogee.  To employ analogous expressions which enrich the language of astronomers, if the projectile remained a satellite of the moon, it ought to be said that it is in its “aposelene” at its most distant point, and at its “periselene” at its nearest.

In the latter case the projectile ought to attain its maximum of speed, in the latter its minimum.  Now it was evidently going towards its “aposelene,” and Barbicane was right in thinking its speed would decrease up to that point, and gradually increase when it would again draw near the moon.  That speed even would be absolutely nil if the point was coexistent with that of attraction.