to learn what the people were crying to us the simplicity of our arrangements enabled us to rise, to descend, to move in horizontal or oblique lines, as we pleased and as often as we considered necessary, without altogether landing.” When they came to Luzarche, the delighted aeronauts resolved to land. Already the people were testifying their pleasure at seeing them. Men came running together from all directions, while all the animals rushed away with equal precipitation, no doubt taking the balloon for some wild beast. Finding that their course would lead them straight against certain houses, the aeronauts again increased their fire, and, slightly rising, escaped the buildings that had been in their way. Shortly afterwards they safely landed forty miles from the spot from which they had started. It was not only the man of science or the mechanician that devoted himself to the task of taking possession of the new empire, but the nobles gave their hands to the aeronauts, and humbly asked the favour of an ascent. The king had addressed letters to the Brothers Montgolfier, and the marvellous invention had become an affair of state. The princes of the blood and the nobles of the court considered it an honour to count among the number of their friends a celebrated aeronaut. The Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., and the Duke de Chartres, father of Louis Philippe, made experiments in aerial navigation. The chemists Alban and Vallet made a magnificent balloon for the Count, who went up many times in it, with several persons of all ranks. Already at St. Cloud, the Duke of Chartres, afterwards Philippe Egalite, had, on the 15th of July, 1784, made, with the Brothers Robert, an ascent which put their courage to terrible tests. The hydrogen gas balloon was oblong, sixty feet high and forty feet in diameter, and it had been constructed upon a plan supplied by Meunier. In order to obviate the use of the valve, he had placed inside the balloon a smaller globe, filled with ordinary air. This was done on the supposition that, when the balloon rose high, the hydrogen being rarefied would compress the little globe within, and press out of it a quantity of ordinary air equal to the amount of its dilation.