"Ah! ah!" said Michel, in a satisfied tone
"It is very nearly," continued Nicholl, "the course described by a bomb launched from a mortar."
"Perfect! And the hyperbola?"
"The hyperbola, Michel, is a curve of the second order, produced by the intersection of a conic surface and a plane parallel to its axis, and constitutes two branches separated one from the other, both tending indefinitely in the two directions.
"Is it possible!" exclaimed Michel Ardan in a serious tone, as if they had told him of some serious event."What I particularly like in your definition of the hyperbola (I was going to say hyperblague) is that it is still more obscure than the word you pretend to define.