Stephen Montgolfier now wishing to send up human passengers, made a balloon of 100,000 cubic feet capacity. It was shaped like a full lemon pointing upward, with a cylindrical neck below, 16 feet in diameter. Around this neck was a wicker balcony three feet wide, to carry the aëronauts, bundles of straw for fuel, pails of water and sponges to extinguish incipient conflagrations, here and there in the balloon, during a journey. Through stokeholes in the side of the neck sheaves of straw could be forked to the grate suspended centrally below by radial chains. During inflation the base of the balloon rested on a platform, and its top was supported by a rope stretched between two poles. The vessel when completed, in a garden of the Faubourg St. Antoine, was 85 feet high by 48 feet across, and weighed 1,600 pounds. About its zone, painted in oil, were elegant decorations; portraits, cyphers of the king’s name, fleur-de-lis, with fancy borders below and above; while higher still, on the arching dome of the bag, were all the signs of the celestial zodiac. The handsome vessel was now ready; but what daring captain should navigate her? King Louis proposed two prisoners who were under sentence of death, and had to be killed somehow. But the brave Pilâtre de Rozier protested indignantly: “Eh quoi! de vils criminels auraient les premiers la gloire de senlever dans les airs! Non, non, cela ne sera point.” He stirred up the city, and finally prevailed, through the entreaties of the Marquis d’Arlandes, who secured from the king permission to accompany his friend. After some days of preliminary practice in maneuvering the tethered balloon, these gentlemen were ready for an aërial voyage. On November 21, 1783, the balloon was inflated in the garden of La Muette palace, and stocked with enough straw for an hour’s journey. When all was ready Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes stepped with eager courage into the gallery taking opposite sides to ensure proper balance. At two o’clock they rose splendidly, amid the acclamations of a vast throng of spectators, and at the height of 280 feet, removing their hats, saluted the surprised multitude. Encountering a south blowing wind, they drifted five miles in some twenty minutes, and landed safely in a field. The apparatus was soon assembled on a cart and returned to the Faubourg St. Antoine, where it was originally constructed. The details of this first human voyage in a balloon are very interesting and well told in a letter written by the Marquis d’Arlande to a member of the French Academy. [Illustration: FIG. 7.—MONTGOLFIER’S PASSENGER BALLOON.]