"Three seconds before the arrival of J. B. Hobson’s letter, I no more thought of pursuing the unicorn than of attempting the passage of the North Sea."
I had rather forgotten that Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea begins with a lot of speculation about a sea-monster, which Aronnax imagines as a gigantic narwhal.
Perhaps an avenging unicorn is needed these days.
Apropos of nothing, I find myself wondering how much old fiction, not just Verne's, depends on the fictional existence of ideal servants. ~Χαρά