ignant, saying,
"_Eh quoi! de vils criminels auraient les premiers la gloire de s'elever
dans les airs! Non, non cela ne sera point!_" ("What! Vile criminals to
have the glory of the first aerial ascension! No, not on any account!")
He stirs up the city in his behalf, and the King at length yields to the
earnest entreaties of the Marquis d'Arlandes, who said that he would
accompany him.

Scarce ten months had elapsed since M. Montgolfier made his first
aerostatic experiment, when M. Pilatre de Rozier publicly offered
himself to be the first adventurer in the newly invented aerial machine.
His offer was accepted; his courage remained undaunted; and on October
15, 1783, he actually ascended, to the astonishment of a gazing
multitude. The following are the particulars of this experiment:

"The accident which happened to the aerostatic machine at Versailles,
and its imperfect construction, induced M. Montgolfier to construct
another machine, of a larger size and more solid. With this intent,
sufficient time was allowed for the work to be properly done; and by
October 10th the aerostat was completed, in a garden in the Faubourg
St.-Antoine. It had an oval shape; its diameter being about forty-eight
feet, and its height about seventy-four. The outside was elegantly
painted and decorated with the signs of the zodiac, with the cipher of
the King's name in _fleurs-de-lis_, etc. The aperture or lower part of
the machine had a wicker gallery about three feet broad, with a
balustrade both within and without about three feet high. The inner
diameter of this gallery, and of the aperture of the machine, the neck
of which passed through it, was near sixteen feet. In the middle of this
aperture an iron grate or brazier was supported by chains which came
down from the sides of the machine.

"In this construction, when the machine was in the air, with a fire
lighted in the grate, it was easy for a person who stood in the gallery,
and had fuel with him, to keep up the fire in the mouth of the machine,
by throwing the fuel on the grate through port-holes made in the neck of
the machine. By this means it was expected, as indeed it was found by
experience, that the machine might have been kept up as long as the
person in its gallery thought proper, or while he had fuel to supply the
fire with. The weight of this aerostat was upward of 16,000 pounds.

"On Wednesday, October 15th, this memorable experiment was performed.
The fire being ligh