The Begum's Millions

When two European scientists unexpectedly inherit an Indian rajah's fortune, each builds an experimental city of his dreams in the wilds of the American Northwest. France-Ville is a harmonious urban community devoted to health and hygiene, the specialty of its French founder, Dr. Francois Sarrasin. Stahlstadt, or City of Steel, is a fortress-like factory town devoted to the manufacture of high-tech weapons of war. Its German creator, the fanatically pro-Aryan Herr Schultze, is Verne's first truly evil scientist. In his quest for world domination and racial supremacy, Schultze decides to showcase his deadly wares by destroying France-Ville and all its inhabitants. Excerpt: " Really these English newspapers are very well written," said the worthy doctor to himself, as he leant back in a great leathern easy-chair. Dr. Sarrasin had all his life been given to soliloquising, one of the many results of absence of mind. He was a man of fifty, or thereabouts ; his features were refined; clear lively eyes shone through his steel spectacles, and the expression of his countenance, although grave, was genial. He was one of those people, looking at whom one says at the first glance, " There is an honest man !" Notwithstanding the early hour, and the easy style of his dress, the doctor had already shaved and put on a white cravat. Scattered near him on the carpet and on sundry chairs, in the sitting-room of his hotel at Brighton, lay copies of the Times, the Daily Telegraphy and the Daily News. It ..."