16 A GLORIOUS OLD AGE On August 27, 1783, just a few days before the signing of the peace treaty with England, a balloon ascension was held at the Champ-de-Mars. It was the first in Paris; the first in history had taken place near Lyons in the previous June. For four days preceding the event, the great balloon of varnished silk had been filling up with hydrogen gas under the direction of the physicist Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles. Paris was agog with excitement. Some 50,000 gathered to watch. Franklin, who was present, reported that the balloon rose rapidly “till it entered the clouds, when it seemed to me scarce bigger than an orange and soon after became invisible.” “What good is it?” a skeptic asked. “What good is a newborn baby?” Franklin retorted, a remark that went around the world. He saw the first free balloon ascend with human passengers on November 20, at the Château de la Muette in Passy. The passengers, scientist Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arland, were lifted some 500 feet, floated over the Seine, and landed in Paris. A few weeks later he witnessed a balloon soar upwards from the Paris Tuileries, taking its human cargo to the incredible height of 2,000 feet. He could not resist speculating as to what man’s triumph over space might mean to the future. Would the balloon perhaps become a common means of transportation? How delightful that would be for one like himself for whom riding in a carriage had become such agony. But he could hardly hope for such comfort in his lifetime. More to the point was the possibility that the actuality of balloon flight might convince “sovereigns of the folly of wars”: Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them? Not even the wealthiest and most powerful ruler could guard his dominions against such an air raid. The terrible threat would mean an end to warfare. So Franklin reasoned, happily unable to peer into the future. Following the Treaty of Paris, Congress had retained his services as ambassador to France for two years longer. He served unofficially as United States ambassador for all of Europe, and new honors rained down on him. He was elected a member of Madrid’s Royal Academy of History, of Manchester’s Literary and Philosophical Society, of the Academies of Sciences and Arts in the French towns of Orléans and Lyons. Through Admiral Lord Richard Howe, a staunch friend still, the British Admiralty sent him Captain Cook’s _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, a tribute to his instructions to American cruisers to refrain from interfering with the explorer and his crew.