M. de Chaudordy, whom I saw at Tours, gave me much encouragement in the interviews I had with him before leaving for Vienna. This gentleman was in daily communication with the representatives of the Powers at Tours and so was better able than we, who had been shut up in Paris, to give an exact estimate of the opinion of Europe and the changes it had undergone. He assured me that M. Jules Favre was right in telling me that there was a considerable move in our favour in the sympathies of Europe. He also, without abandoning himself to over-sanguine ideas, hoped much from this change of opinion. He thought that the efforts which I was about to make in the Cabinets of Vienna and London ought to be attempted, and that they might very well produce satisfactory results. Under these circumstances I was all impatience to leave and arrive at Vienna, since, according to my instructions, the Austrian Government was the first that I was to address. But before going to Vienna I wanted to inform myself as to the situation in Germany, in order to be able to speak with full _connaissance de cause_. I left Tours in the first days of November, and directed my course towards Germany. CHAPTER II THE DEPARTURE Our departure from Paris was fixed for the 28th of October, at nine in the morning. It was a beautifully fresh and clear day. The sky was cloudless and the sun sent its fairest rays over the earth, while an icy wind swept the calm and deserted streets of the capital. In spite of the early hour there were already many people standing round the balloon, which was being inflated. Two or three hundred of the curious had come to watch our departure. When I arrived the balloon was filling slowly and pompously. It was already beginning to leave the ground, little by little and majestically, like a giant rising out of the earth. Its formidable mass was soon entirely upright, and balanced and shifted as if impatient to take flight. Now it has mounted and floats in the wind over its little “nacelle” or car, the latter still firmly attached to the ground to allow its cargo to be loaded. The car was packed with five or six mail-bags full of correspondence and _depêches_--thousands of little letters, on the fine paper invented during the Siege of Paris for the needs of a new correspondence service through the clouds--rare and impatiently expected messages which distributed to France outside the solace of a written line and a living signal from the beloved ones shut up within the ramparts. When all was loaded, it was the passengers’ turn. Before going up it was necessary to know the direction of the wind. As all the east of France was already invested, balloons could only leave with some chance of safety if the wind blew towards the west.