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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，因為膩煩了正在出席的時尚晚會，他突然離開。他高興地沿著樓梯扶手往下滑。在扶手的末端，他掉了下來，恰巧撞在一個正準備上樓的胖紳士身上。儒勒不假思索脫口問道：“先生，吃過晚飯沒有？”
The other replied that he had—he had dined wonderfully on an omelet made in the style of Nantes.
那人回答說吃了——很愉快地吃了一個南特風格的煎蛋。
To this Verne retorted, "Bah, no one in Paris can make one!"
凡爾納反駁道：“哼！巴黎沒人會做那樣的煎蛋！”
"Can you?" asked the stout fellow.
“你會嗎？”那個胖子問道。
"Of course—I am from Nantes," said Jules.
“我當然會啦——我是南特人，”儒勒說。
"Very well, then, come to dinner next Wednesday—and cook the omelet."
“那太好了！下禮拜三來我家吃飯吧，給我們做些煎蛋。”
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.
說著，他遞給這個年輕人一張名片，然后繼續上樓去了。他就是亞歷山大·大仲馬，《三個火槍手》的作者。當時儒勒就驚呆了，那樣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.
認識大仲馬更使凡爾納堅定了要當作家的想法。在這位長者的鼓勵下，儒勒決定要在地理學領域進行創作，就像大仲馬的寫作集中在歷史學范疇那樣。他開始把時間都花在了看書和寫作上，徹底忘記了他是來巴黎學法律的。
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."
他的父親無法容忍他這樣荒廢學業，一怒之下，斷了他的經濟來源。儒勒在一家劇院找了一份報酬不高的工作，隨后的幾年過得很艱苦。他在給媽媽的信中這樣寫道：“我吃了牛排，這頭牛幾天前還在巴黎的大街上拉車呢。”他有一次一連吃了三天的梅干，因為他拿飯錢去買了一套莎士比亞全集。他衣衫襤褸、饑寒交迫。他這樣對朋友說：“我的長襪好像蜘蛛網，里面一直睡著河馬。”
