Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies

Shortly afterwards they safely landed forty miles from the spot from which they had started. It was not only the man of science or the mechanician that devoted himself to the task of taking possession of the new empire, but the nobles gave their hands to the aeronauts, and humbly asked the favour of an ascent. The king had addressed letters to the Brothers Montgolfier, and the marvellous invention had become an affair of state. The princes of the blood and the nobles of the court considered it an honour to count among the number of their friends a celebrated aeronaut. The Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., and the Duke de Chartres, father of Louis Philippe, made experiments in aerial navigation. The chemists Alban and Vallet made a magnificent balloon for the Count, who went up many times in it, with several persons of all ranks. Already at St. Cloud, the Duke of Chartres, afterwards Philippe Egalite, had, on the 15th of July, 1784, made, with the Brothers Robert, an ascent which put their courage to terrible tests. The hydrogen gas balloon was oblong, sixty feet high and forty feet in diameter, and it had been constructed upon a plan supplied by Meunier. In order to obviate the use of the valve, he had placed inside the balloon a smaller globe, filled with ordinary air. This was done on the supposition that, when the balloon rose high, the hydrogen being rarefied would compress the little globe within, and press out of it a quantity of ordinary air equal to the amount of its dilation. At eight o’clock, the Brothers Robert--Collin and Hullin--and the Duke of Chartres, ascended in presence of an immense multitude. The nearest ranks kneeled down to allow those behind to have a view of the departure of the balloon, which disappeared among the clouds amid the acclamations of the prostrate multitude. The machine, obedient to the stormy and contrary winds which it met, turned several times completely round. The helm, which had been fitted to the machine, and the two oars, gave such a purchase to the winds that the voyagers, already surrounded by the clouds, cut them away. But the oscillations continued, and the little globe inside not being suspended with cords, fell down in such an unfortunate manner