ture the gas.

The first experiment had been made in the provinces. This one was
set for Paris, and in an era when the French capital was
intellectually more alert, more eager for novelty, more interested
in the advancement of physical science and in new inventions than
ever in its long history of hospitality to the new idea. They began
to fill the bag August 23, 1783 in the _Place des Victoires_, but
the populace so thronged that square that two days later it was
moved half filled to Paris's most historic point, the _Champ de
Mars_. The transfer was made at midnight through the narrow dark
streets of mediaeval Paris. Eyewitnesses have left descriptions of
the scene. Torch-bearers lighted on its way the cortege the central
feature of which was the great bag, half filled with gas, flabby,
shapeless, monstrous, mysterious, borne along by men clutching at
its formless bulk. The state had recognized the importance of the
new device and cuirassiers in glittering breastplates on horseback,
and halbardiers in buff leather on foot guarded it in its transit
through the sleeping city. But Paris was not all asleep. An escort
of the sensation-loving rabble kept pace with the guards. The cries
of the quarters rose above the tramp of the armed men. Observers
have recorded that the passing cab drivers were so affected by
wonder that they clambered down from their boxes and with doffed
hats knelt in the highway while the procession passed.

The ascension, which occurred two days later, was another moving
spectacle. In the centre of the great square which has seen so many
historic pageants, rose the swaying, quivering balloon, now filled
to its full capacity of twenty-two thousand feet. Whether from the
art instinct indigenous to the French, or some superstitious idea
like that which impels the Chinese to paint eyes on their junks, the
balloon was lavishly decorated in water colours, with views of
rising suns, whirling planets, and other solar bodies amongst which
it was expected to mingle.

Ranks of soldiers kept the populace at a distance, while within the
sacred precincts strolled the King and the ladies and cavaliers of
his court treading all unconsciously on the brink of that red terror
soon to engulf the monarchy. The gas in the reeling bag was no more
inflammable than the air of Paris in those days just before the
Revolution. With a salvo of cannon the guy-ropes were released and
the balloon vanished in the clouds.

Benjami