as increased by decorations
weighing five hundred pounds.

An account of the former trips of this balloon will not be without
interest. Its first ascension was made in the presence of their Prussian
Majesties and the whole court, upon which occasion it carried M.
Garnerin, his wife, and M. Gaertner, and descended upon the frontiers of
Saxony.

The second ascension was at St. Petersburg, in the presence of the
Emperor, the two Empresses, and the court, carrying Monsieur and Madame
Garnerin; and it fell a short distance off in a marsh. This was the
first balloon ascension ever seen in Russia.

The third trial was also at St. Petersburg, in the presence of the
imperial family. M. Garnerin ascended, accompanied by General Suolf;
and the two travelers were transported across the Gulf of Friedland in
three-quarters of an hour, and descended at Krasnoe-selo, twenty-five
versts from St. Petersburg. The fourth trial took place at Moscow, and
Garnerin ascended more than four thousand toises [24,000 ft.] He had
many harrowing experiences, and at the end of seven hours descended
three hundred and thirty versts [200 miles] from Moscow, in the
neighborhood of the old frontiers of Russia. This same balloon was
again used at the ascension which Madame Garnerin made at Moscow with
Madame Toucheninolf, in the midst of a frightful storm, and amid flashes
of lightning which killed three men within three hundred paces of the
balloon, at the very instant of the ascension. These ladies descended
without accident twenty-one versts from Moscow.

The city of Paris gave a gratuity of six hundred francs to the boatmen
who had drawn out of Lake Bracciano the balloon, which was brought back
to Paris, and placed in the museum of the Hotel de Ville.

I was a witness that same day of the kindness with which the Emperor
received the petition of a poor woman, a notary's wife, I believe, whose
husband had been condemned on account of some crime, I know not what, to
a long imprisonment. As the carriage of their Imperial Majesties passed
before the Palais-Royal, two women, one already old, the other sixteen or
seventeen years of age, sprang to the door, crying, "Pardon for my
husband, pardon for my father."

The Emperor immediately, in a loud tone, gave the order to stop his
carriage, and held out his hand for the petition which the older of the
two women would give to no one but him, at the same time consoling her
with kind words, and showing a most