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HEAVIER THAN AIR 235

chanced to be near by, and asked the children if they had
ever seen a balloon.

“Oh, yes,” said Marie; “don’t you remember, Henri,
how we saw one on the Emperor’s birthday sailing up way
over the Champs de Mars? But it was n't a bit like this
thing, and it had n’t any monkeys in it. It was like the
little one up there in the picture.”

“That looks little,” said the old gentleman, “because it
is very far off in the air, J have been up in a balloon even
higher than that.”

The children stared first at Monsieur, then at the picture,
and Marie asked timidly :

“With a monkey ?”

“No, no,” he laughed, “not with a monkey. But once I
went up at night with a scientific friend, and we took a
carrier-pigeon with us. We let him loose with a note tied
under his wing telling his owner that we were safe and
happy and more than a mile high. And, another time, two
friends and myself went up in late autumn, and actually
sailed into a snow-storm, high, high over the world, and
with clouds both above and below us.”

Marie hardly heard. She was gazing at the picture.

“Ah! I see you must be satisfied about those apes be-
fore you will listen to anything more. One cannot tell
from a picture all that has been happening; but J think
this: I think those two monkeys belonged to a public
garden, and one day, when a balloon was going to make its
ascent from there, the monkeys jumped in before any
one could stop them, and loosened the cords that held the
balloon down, and up it rose high in the air, amid the