Select the correct text in the passage.
Which detail best characterizes the narrator's uncle in the excerpt?
excerpt from A Journey to the Center of the Earth
by Jules Verme
But my uncle was not a man to be kept waitting: so adjouming therefore all minor questions, I presented myself before him.
He was a very leamed man. Now most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods for the benefit of others
and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg he studied, he
consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge acquired to himse
There was a reason, and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his leaming more than was absolutely necessary he
stammered; and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun
moon, and stars that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced by
a very powerful adjective.
As I said, my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, was a very leamed man; and I now add a most kind relative. I was bound to him by the double ties of affection
and interest. I took deep interest in all his doings, and hoped some day to be almost as leamed myself. It was a rare thing for me to be absent from his
lectures. Like him, I preferred mineralogy to all the other sciences. My anxiety was to gain real knowledge of the earth. Geology and mineralogy were to us
the sole objects of life, and in connection with these studies many a fair specimen of stone, chalk, or metal did we break with our hammers