ur 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.

At eight o'clock, the Brothers Robert--Collin and Hullin--and the Duke
of Chartres, ascended in presence of an immense multitude. The nearest
ranks kneeled down to allow those behind to have a view of the departure
of the balloon, which disappeared among the clouds amid the acclamations
of the prostrate multitude. The machine, obedient to the stormy and
contrary winds which it met, turned several times completely round. The
helm, which had been fitted to the machine, and the two oars, gave such
a purchase to the winds that the voyagers, already surrounded by the
clouds, cut them away. But the oscillations continued, and the little
globe inside not being suspended with cords, fell down in such an
unfortunate manner as to close up the opening of the large balloon, by
means of which provision had been made for the egress of the gas now
dilated by the heat of the sun, which poured down its rays, a sudden
gust having cleared the space of the clouds. It was feared that the case
of the balloon would crack, and the whole thing collapse, in spite of
the efforts of the aeronauts to push back the smaller balloon from the
opening. Then the Duke of Chartres seized one of the flags they carried,
and with the lance-head pierced the balloon in two places. A rent of
about nine feet was the consequence, and the balloon began to descend
with amazing rapidity. They would have fallen into a lake had they not
thrown over 60 lbs. of ballast, which