What I Saw
of these gentlemen, eager to make a ascent. Some no longer took up the matter, others terrified me with the dangers of going up and the exaggeration of the prices. There was one, however, who, after informing me of all the means, asked for more than a thousand francs to take me with him, and I had to pay for any damage caused by the balloon on its return to earth.
The condition was threatening, because this gentleman had once knocked down the chimney of a power plant, another time he had descended on a peasant's house and the gas from the balloon, in contact with the chimney, had set fire to the house...
I remembered my father's advice and his serious examples of sobriety and economy. In a few hours I was going to spend almost the entire month's rent and, very probably, the entire year's rent!
I was discouraged to make an ascent. It was too complicated...
⁂
For several years, I studied and traveled.
I followed with interest, in the illustrated newspapers, André's expedition to the North Pole; in 1897,
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