"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora--_la belle Aurore_, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring--I had set out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and fasten the plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages! That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and I are not sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs to the window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason, for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The Mayor of Meudon thunders at our door in the name of the Law, demanding, I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation through the megaphone--Xavier is two hundred feet above us. "'Mons. Lavalle, descend and make reparation for outrage of domicile. Descend, Mons. Lavalle!' "No one answers. "'Xavier Lavalle, in the name of the Law, descend and submit to process for outrage of domicile.' "Xavier, roused from his calculations, only comprehending the last words: 'Outrage of domicile? My dear mayor, who is the man that has corrupted thy Julie?' "The mayor, furious, 'Xavier Lavalle----' "Xavier, interrupting: 'I have not that felicity. I am only a dealer in cyclones!' "My faith, he raised one then! All Meudon attended in the streets, and my Xavier, after a long time comprehending what he had done, excused himself in a thousand apologies. At last the reconciliation was effected in our house over a supper at two in the morning--Julie in a wonderful costume of compromises, and I have her and the mayor pacified in beds in the blue room." And on the next day, while the mayor rebuilds his roof, her Xavier departs anew for the Aurora Borealis, there to commence his life's work. M. Victor Lavalle tells us of that historic collision (_en plane_) on the flank of Hecla between Herrera, then a pillar of the Spanish school, and the man destined to confute his theories and lead him intellectually captive. Even through the years, the immense laugh of Lavalle as he sustains the Spaniard's wrecked plane, and cries: "Courage! _I_ shall not fall till I have found Truth, and I hold _you_ fast!" rings like the call of trumpets. This is that Lavalle whom the world, immersed in speculations of immediate gain, did not know nor suspect--the Lavalle whom they adjudged to the last a pedant and a theorist.