after that
time seemed to be impossible to him who attempted the conquest of the
atmosphere. This idea clothed itself in every form. The young embraced
it with enthusiasm, the old made it the subject of endless regrets. When
one of the first aeronautic ascents was made, the old Marechal Villeroi,
an octogenarian and an invalid, was conducted to one of the windows of
the Tuileries, almost by force, for he did not believe in balloons. The
balloon, meanwhile, detached itself from its moorings; the physician
Charles, seated in the car, gaily saluted the public, and was then
majestically launched into space in his air-boat; and at once the old
Marechal, beholding this, passed suddenly from unbelief to perfect faith
in aerostatics and in the capacity of the human mind, fell on his knees,
and, with his eyes bathed in tears, moaned out pitifully the words,
"Yes, it is fixed! It is certain! They will find out the secret of
avoiding death; but it will be after I am gone!"

If we recall the impressions which the first air-journeys made, we shall
find that, among people of enthusiastic temperament, it was believed
that it was not merely the blue sky above us, not merely the terrestrial
atmosphere, but the vast spaces through which the worlds move, that
were to become the domain of man--the sea of the balloon. The moon,
the mysterious dwelling-place of men unknown, would no longer be an
inaccessible place. Space no longer contained regions which man could
not cross! Indeed, certain expeditions attempted the crossing of the
heavens, and brought back news of the moon. The planets that revolve
round the sun, the far-flying comets, the most distant stars--these
formed the field which from that time was to lie open to the
investigations of man.

This enthusiasm one can well enough understand. There is in the simple
fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so astonishing, that the
human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it. And if this is
the feeling of men at the present day, when, after having been witnesses
of ascents for the last eighty years, they see men confiding themselves
in a swinging car into the immensities of space, what must have been the
astonishment of those who, for the first time since the commencement
of the world, beheld one of their fellow-creatures rolling in space,
without any other assurance of safety than what his still dim perception
of the laws of nature gave him?

Why should we be obliged