Page:Wonderful Balloon Ascents, 1870.djvu/101

Rh "M. Robert descended from the car, and I was alone in the balloon.

"I said to the duke, 'Monseigneur, I go.' I said to the peasants who held down the balloon, 'My friends, go away, all of you, from the car at the moment I give the signal.' I then rose like a bird, and in ten minutes I was more than 3,000 feet above the ground. I no longer perceived terrestrial objects; I only saw the great masses of nature.

"In going away, Charles had taken his precautions against the possible explosion of the balloon, and made himself ready to make certain observations. In order to observe the barometer and the thermometer, placed at different extremities of the car, without endangering the equilibrium, he sat down in the middle, a watch and paper in his left hand, a pen and the cord of the safety-valve in his right.

"I waited for what should happen," continues he. "The balloon, which was quite flabby and soft when I ascended, was now taut, and fully distended. Soon the hydrogen gas began to escape in considerable quantities by the neck of the balloon, and then, from time to time, I pulled open the valve to give it two issues at once; and I continued thus to mount upwards, all the time losing the inflammable air, which, rushing past me from the neck of the balloon, felt like a warm cloud.

"I passed in ten minutes from the temperature of spring to that of winter; the cold was keen and dry, but not insupportable. I examined all my sensations calmly; I could hear myself live, so to speak, and I am certain that at first I experienced nothing disagreeable in this sudden passage from one temperature to another.

"When the barometer ceased to move I noted very