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One evening, bored with a fashionable party which he was attending, he left abruptly and slid down the banister. At the bottom he slipped off and landed squarely on a stout gentleman about to ascend the stairs. Jules blurted out the first thing that came into his head. "Have you had your dinner, sir?" he asked.
一天晚上，因为腻烦了正在出席的时尚晚会，他突然离开。他高兴地沿着楼梯扶手往下滑。在扶手的末端，他掉了下来，恰巧撞在一个正准备上楼的胖绅士身上。儒勒不假思索脱口问道：“先生，吃过晚饭没有？”
The other replied that he had—he had dined wonderfully on an omelet made in the style of Nantes.
那人回答说吃了——很愉快地吃了一个南特风格的煎蛋。
To this Verne retorted, "Bah, no one in Paris can make one!"
凡尔纳反驳道：“哼！巴黎没人会做那样的煎蛋！”
"Can you?" asked the stout fellow.
“你会吗？”那个胖子问道。
"Of course—I am from Nantes," said Jules.
“我当然会啦——我是南特人，”儒勒说。
"Very well, then, come to dinner next Wednesday—and cook the omelet."
“那太好了！下礼拜三来我家吃饭吧，给我们做些煎蛋。”
With that, he handed the young man his card and continued up the steps. It was Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers. You could have knocked Jules over with a breadstick.
说着，他递给这个年轻人一张名片，然后继续上楼去了。他就是亚历山大·大仲马，《三个火枪手》的作者。当时儒勒就惊呆了，那样子用一根面包棒就可以把他打翻在地。
Knowing Dumas confirmed young Verne's desire to be an author. Jules, urged on by the older man, made up his mind he would do for geography what Dumas had done for history. He began spending his days reading and writing and forgot completely that he was in Paris to become a lawyer.
认识大仲马更使凡尔纳坚定了要当作家的想法。在这位长者的鼓励下，儒勒决定要在地理学领域进行创作，就像大仲马的写作集中在历史学范畴那样。他开始把时间都花在了看书和写作上，彻底忘记了他是来巴黎学法律的。
His father, impatient with the boy's neglect of his studies, cut off his allowance. Jules obtained a small job in a theater, but the years that followed were lean ones. "I eat beefsteak that a few days ago was pulling a cart through the streets of Paris," he wrote to his mother. Once he ate nothing but dried prunes for three days because he had spent his food money on a set of Shakespeare. He was ragged and cold. "My stockings," he told a friend, "are like a spider-web in which a hippopotamus has been sleeping."
他的父亲无法容忍他这样荒废学业，一怒之下，断了他的经济来源。儒勒在一家剧院找了一份报酬不高的工作，随后的几年过得很艰苦。他在给妈妈的信中这样写道：“我吃了牛排，这头牛几天前还在巴黎的大街上拉车呢。”他有一次一连吃了三天的梅干，因为他拿饭钱去买了一套莎士比亚全集。他衣衫褴褛、饥寒交迫。他这样对朋友说：“我的长袜好像蜘蛛网，里面一直睡着河马。”
