He took up his quarters in the
magnificent gardens of his friend Reveillon, proprietor of the
royal manufactory of stained paper in the Faubourg St. Antoine.
The new balloon was of a very singular shape: the upper part
represented a prism, twenty-four feet high the top was a pyramid
of the same height; the lower part was a truncated cone, twenty
feet in depth. It was made of packing-cloth, lined with good
paper, both inside and out.
The gossipping and prolix Faujas de Saint Fond thus describes
this machine:--"It was painted blue, represented a sort of tent,
and was richly ornamented with gold Its height was seventy feet;
its weight 1,000 lbs.; the air which it displaced was 4,500 lbs.
in volume, and the vapor with which it was filled was half the
weight of ordinary air. The approach of the equinox having
brought rain, all the conditions under which this balloon was
constructed and exhibited were unfavourable. The structure was
so large that it was impossible to get it together and stitch it,
except in the open air--in the garden, in fact, where Montgolfier
commenced its construction. It was a great labour to turn and
fold this heavy covering, while the liability of the thick paper
to crack was an additional difficulty.
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