as truly magnificent, grasped two
large ropes with her delicate hands. Nadar did the like, but at the
same time put his arms round his wife so as to protect her body. I was
on one side towards the middle of the sort of hurdle which serves as a
balcony. I was on my knees and clinging to two ropes. Montgolfier,
Thirion, and Saint Felix were near me. The balloon descended so rapidly
that it gave us the vertigo. The air, which we had left so calm above,
became a violent wind as we neared the earth. `We are going to throw
down the anchors,' said Godard, `hold tight!' Ah! the car struck the
earth with tremendous violence. I cannot imagine how it was that my
arms were not broken. After the first terrible shock the balloon went
up again, but the safety-valve was opened--it again fell--and we
suffered a second shock, if not more violent, at least more painful to
us than the first. Up we went again; the balloon dragged its anchors.
Several times we thought we should be thrown out. `The anchors are
broken,' exclaimed Godard. The balloon beat the ground with its head,
like a kite when it falls down. It was horrible. On we went towards
Nienburg, at the rate of ten leagues an hour. Three large trees were
cut through by the car, as clean as if by a woodman's hatchet. One
small anchor still remained to us. We threw it down, and it carried
away the roof of a house. If the balloon had dragged us through the
town we should, inevitably, have been cut to pieces. But fortunately it
rose a little and then bumped against the ground again with as much
violence as before. Every one of these shocks wrenched our limbs; to
complete our misfortunes the rope of the safety-valve got loose from us,
and the safety-valve shutting up we lost all hope of the balloon
emptying itself. It went on by bounds of twenty-five, thirty, and forty
metres from the earth, and continued to fall upon its head. Everything
that stood in the way of the car was dashed to pieces.

"Jules Godard then tried, and accomplished, an act of sublime heroism.
He clambered up into the netting, the shocks of which were so terrible
that three times he fell on my head. At length he reached the cord of
the valve, opened it, and the gas having a way of escape the monster
ceased to rise but it still shot along in a horizontal line with
prodigious rapidity. There were we squatting down upon the frail osier
car. `Take care!' we cried, when a tree was in the way. We tu