Gione looked longingly towards the eastern Mongolfière. Wilhelmi understood her. Her soul was as bold as it was calm, she had already visited many of the magic caves of earth, and had ascended to the summits of the highest Alps; she wished now to rise in the air, and to float in the heavens above this beautiful country, and on this beauteous night; but the enjoyment of the prospect was not her only motive. Wilhelmi asked who should be her companion. Solitude was her chief desire. The breadth and depth of the boat under the globe, a chair in it, and the cords by which she would be raised and lowered, secured the trip from all danger. Like a celestial being she rose beneath the stars,--the night and the height threw a mist over her rising form. A slight zephyr rocked the blooming Aurora, and crowned the moving goddess with alternate constellations. Now her countenance appeared surrounded by pale supernatural rays. It seemed bright as an angel rising towards its kindred stars through the rich dark blue space. An unusual tremor seized on Wilhelmi and Karlson; it was as if they saw their beloved one again carried from them on the wings of the angel of Death. When she returned to us her eyes were red with weeping; she had ascended, that she might in an unseen moment, shed her old heavy tears near the stars. O the Celestial one! She smiled strangely in the slumber of this life at higher joys than earthly ones, as sleeping children smile when they see Angels. It was now impossible to repress my longing for the stars, and my petition to be allowed to ascend. Permission to use the western Mongolfière was willingly bestowed. Nadine, emboldened by the safe return of her sister, and by the companion in the danger, skipped into the boat, with her usual impulsive warmth, to refresh her thirsting soul with the majestic immeasurability of night. And now the suns raised us. The heavy earth sank down as the past; wings such as man has in happy dreams bore us upwards.