(He picks up his violin and plays a gavotte with a surprisingly powerful sound.)

Valdemar: That's amazing!

Tartelet: It's wonderful. Let's keep on playing.

(While Tartelet is playing, a few creatures with bizarre faces, very low foreheads, a wild look in their eyes, and disheveled hair; appear between the rocks upstage, listening and showing signs of the greatest surprise)

Eva (sees them and screams): Oh! Look at those monsters!

George (moving upstage): Good God!

Eva: George! George! Stop!

(Tartelet stops playing. The monsters disappear

Ox: Yes, stay here. Anyway, as you see, they've disappeared.

George: What are these strange creatures?

Ox: This is the first of the mysteries that will be revealed to us. In the subterranean depths there's a whole population of living creatures.

George: A whole population!

Valdemar: A whole population!

Tartelet: Of living creatures! All right, then, we'll introduce them to the elementary principles of the dance.

Valdemar: Perhaps it was one of those gentlemen who threw the stone at me.

George: But how could a race of human beings have come into being and live way down here?

Volsius: Ask the learned Dr. Ox to answer that question.

Ox: Nothing could be more simple. All that was needed was for some inhabitants of the earth to be swallowed up here during one of the natural catastrophes that occurred thousands of years ago. They probably populated these vast solitary spaces, and their descen dants, gradually modified by the environment in which they lived, lost their resemblance to the human race and became the lower creatures that you have just seen .14

Valdemar: Really!

Eva: It seemed to me just now that music had a sort of fascination for them.

Volsius: Yes, that's true.

George: What became of them? Let's go and look for them.

Eva: No, no!

Ox: What we need to find now is the route that will take us to our goal.

(A loud subterranean noise is heard.)

George: Listen to those noises coming through the earth's crust.

Valdemar: It's having convulsions now.

Ox: Soon, perhaps, the fire will open a path for us, leading from the earth to the crater of Vesuvius.

Volsius: And would you dare to travel that path?

George: Yes, yes.

Ox: We will dare!

Volsius: As I told you before, this goes beyond recklessness, it's ....

Ox: It's courage, plain and simple. Do you know what courage is, Professor Lidenbrok?

Volsius: Go wherever your pride drives you, then. (To Eva) I will pray fervently for you, you poor child. You are the soul of resignation, virtue, and piety. (To Ox) Do you know what piety and virtue are, Dr. Ox? (Exit)

Eva: He's going away.

Ox: Let him go. He can spare us his cowardly advice. (Another noise, louder than before) Listen, listen again. The route we're looking for will open up in that direction.

George: Come. We'll look for it together.

Eva: George. (Exit Ox and George) George!

Valdemar: I think the other one was wiser. I'll try to catch up with him. (Exit on the other side)

Eva: Ah! He doesn't even hear my voice.

Tartelet: That was a bad idea of your grandmother's, to call this damned doctor to the castle.

Eva: He would have come anyway, my friend, sooner or later.

Tartelet: What do you mean?

Eva: Sooner or later, he would have taken over George's imagination in the way he did, not to give him peace of mind, not to cure him, but to destroy him.

Tartelet: And to what end?

Eva: This man is the one who was always following me.

Tartelet: Him! Ah! Now I understand. He has the audacity to love you. Ah! Dr. Ox, what a pretty dance this dancing master would teach you, if only I could!

Eva: Don't attack him, my friend. He has some strange, supernatural power. (Enter Ox upstage) Everything about him terrifies me: his imperious, dominating voice, the irresistible fascination of his glance. (Ox, who has slowly come downstage, now approaches Tartelet)

Tartelet: It's true that the expression in his eyes is strangely diabol....

Eva: Him!

Tartelet (catches sight of Ox staring him in the face): Strangely diabol. ... No.... I ... I mean.

(Ox holds out his arm and gestures to him to leave)

Tartelet: Allow me, doctor....