Imagination, intoxicated with past
successes, could descry no limit to human power; the gates of the
infinite seemed to be swinging back before man's advancing step,
and the last was believed to be the greatest of his achievements.
In order to comprehend the frenzy of the enthusiasm which the
first aeronautic triumphs called forth, it is necessary to recall
the appearance of Montgolfier at Versailles, on the 19th of
September, 1783, before Louis XVI, or of the earliest aeronauts
at the Tuileries. Paris hailed the first of these men with the
greatest acclaim, "and then, as now," says a French writer, "the
voice of Paris gave the cue to France, and France to the world!"
Nobles and artisans, scientific men and badauds, great and small,
were moved with one universal impulse. In the streets the
praises of the balloon were sung; in the libraries models of it
abounded; and in the salons the one universal topic was the great
"machine." In anticipation, the poet delighted himself with
bird's-eye views of the scenery of strange countries; the
prisoner mused on what might be a new way of escape; the
physicist visited the laboratory in which the lightning and the
meteors were manufactured; the geometrician beheld the plans of
cities and the outlines of kingdoms; the general discovered the
position of the enemy or rained shells on the besieged town; the
police beheld a new mode in which to carry on the secret service;
Hope heralded a new conquest from the domain of nature, and the
historian registered a new chapter in the annals of human
knowledge.
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