my time I do not give myself worry--I know
that she will understand that there are contingencies. When she greets
me there are no reproaches. She is the wife for a sportsman!

"But it is not always that I rely simply upon the sympathy of my Irene.
It was not so when I went in a balloon to hunt tigers. She was then at
my side, for there was no other place where she would have been
satisfied, or where I would have had her. There are vicissitudes which
should be faced together by those who love.

"I had long wished to hunt tigers, and it had come into my head that
it would be a grand and novel idea, and also extremely practicable,
to shoot at these savage creatures from a balloon. This would be an
exhilarating sensation, and it would be safe. In no other way would I
take my Irene with me when tiger-hunting; and in no other way, I freely
admit, would I be very desirous of going myself.

"I have heard that one of my countrymen had himself shut up in a stout
cage and conveyed to a region infested by tigers. There, with his rifle,
he sat comfortably in a chair, with a lantern on a table near by. When,
at night, the tigers crowded round his cage, he shot them. But this
would not have suited me. Suppose a bar of the cage should have been
broken!

"But in a balloon it would be different. Poised in the air a moderate
distance above the ground, I could shoot at tigers beneath me and laugh
at their efforts to reach my height. Therefore it was that I determined
to hunt my tigers in a balloon. Irene screamed when I mentioned this
plan, but she did not refuse to go with me. She had been in balloons,
but she had never seen an unrestricted tiger. Now she could enjoy these
two pleasures at once, and be with me.

"This happened in French Tonkin. We were in a little outlying town where
there was a garrison, and some engineers who made military observations
in a balloon. This was a captive balloon not employed for independent
ascensions, and from some of the officers, who were my friends, I
procured it for my projected tiger hunt. They were all much interested
in my expedition, for if it succeeded there would be a new variety of
sport in this monotonous region.

"The balloon was supplied with gas sufficient to carry myself and my
Irene, with rifles, provisions, and various necessities, and its lifting
power was so proportioned to the weight it carried as to keep it at the
height of an ordinary church steeple above the earth.

"About