igarette paper out of the basket now and then. If this paper appears
to fall down like a stone, it means that the balloon is rising; if it
appears to shoot skyward the balloon is descending.

The two barometers mark about five hundred meters, and we gaze with
enthusiastic admiration at the earth we are leaving and to which we are
not attached in any way; it looks like a colored map, an immense plan of
the country. All its noises, however, rise to our ears very distinctly,
easily recognizable. We hear the sound of the wheels rolling in the
streets, the snap of a whip, the cries of drivers, the rolling and
whistling of trains and the laughter of small boys running after one
another. Every time we pass over a village the noise of children's
voices is heard above the rest and with the greatest distinctness. Some
men are calling us; the locomotives whistle; we answer with the siren,
which emits plaintive, fearfully shrill wails like the voice of a weird
being wandering through the world.

We perceive lights here and there, some isolated fire in the farms,
and lines of gas in the towns. We are going toward the northwest, after
roaming for some time over the little lake of Enghien. Now we see a
river; it is the Oise, and we begin to argue about the exact spot we are
passing. Is that town Creil or Pontoise--the one with so many lights?
But if we were over Pontoise we could see the junction of the Seine
and the Oise; and that enormous fire to the left, isn't it the blast
furnaces of Montataire? So then we are above Creil. The view is superb;
it is dark on the earth, but we are still in the light, and it is now
past ten o'clock. Now we begin to hear slight country noises, the double
cry of the quail in particular, then the mewing of cats and the barking
of dogs. Surely the dogs have scented the balloon; they have seen it and
have given the alarm. We can hear them barking all over the plain and
making the identical noise they make when baying at the moon. The cows
also seem to wake up in the barns, for we can hear them lowing; all the
beasts are scared and moved before the aerial monster that is passing.

The delicious odors of the soil rise toward us, the smell of hay, of
flowers, of the moist, verdant earth, perfuming the air-a light air, in
fact, so light, so sweet, so delightful that I realize I never was so
fortunate as to breathe before. A profound sense of well-being, unknown
to me heretofore, pervades me, a well-being of