PHANTASMAGORIA
The Memoirs of Étienne-Gaspard Robertson
COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED READING EDITION — VOLUMES I AND II
AI-generated translation, internally compared with source images. No independent human bilingual review. No first-ever translation claim.
References in the historical text and contents use original printed pagination. Stable block IDs and source PDF ranges below refer to the accompanying source records.

Volume I: Original Front Matter

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Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs of the Physicist and Aeronaut E. G. Robertson, known for his phantasmagoria experiments and his balloon ascents in the principal cities of Europe; formerly a professor of physics. Illustrated with plates and figures. First Volume. Paris: Roret’s Encyclopedic Bookshop, 10 bis, rue Hautefeuille.

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Continuations of Buffon, in octavo format, by Messrs. F. Cuvier, Duméril, Lacordaire, Boisduval, de Saint-Fargeau, Walckenaer, Milne-Edwards, de Candolle, Brongniart, and others. 5 francs 50 centimes per volume of 500 to 700 pages. Each installment of ten plates: 3 francs in black and white, 6 francs in color.

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18 francs per year. The Technologist, or Records of Progress in French and Foreign Industry, by M. Malepeyre.

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Original front wrapper of Volume I, including its illustration, border, title and publisher’s advertisements.

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Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs. Volume I.

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Original half-title page.

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Work printed by M. Rignoux.

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Original printer’s notice.

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Robertson’s phantasmagoria in the courtyard of the Capucines in 1797. Designed by Robertson. Engraved by Lejeune.

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Original frontispiece, Volume I; the engraved caption is translated above.

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Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs of the Physicist and Aeronaut E. G. Robertson, known for his phantasmagoria experiments and his balloon ascents in the principal cities of Europe; formerly a professor of physics. Illustrated with plates and figures. First Volume. Paris: Roret’s Encyclopedic Bookshop, 10 bis, rue Hautefeuille. 1840.

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Original 1840 title page.

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Printing house of Pommeret and Guénot, 2, rue Mignon.

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Original printing-house imprint.

Editorial record

The front matter is transcribed from the original printed pages, including both distinct printer imprints and the publisher’s advertisements on the wrapper. The advertisements are publishing matter, not Robertson’s narrative. The wrapper bears no year; the title page bears1840. Original margins, ornaments and signatures are preserved in the accompanying full-page images.

PDF2 and5 are unprinted versos with show-through, not additional author text. Handwritten ownership or collation marks are retained in the facsimiles but are not treated as printed author text. In the advertisement, the abbreviated range “5 à700 pages” is expanded to500–700 pages. The engraved Latin signature abbreviations inv. and sculp. are translated as “Designed by” and “Engraved by.”

Preface

By E. Roch

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The prodigious number of memoirs published in recent years has met with great favor, and the title alone now serves as a passport and a letter of credit for publications of every kind. Having replaced history for many readers, memoirs have ended by taking the place of novels. Every living celebrity first enjoyed the perfectly natural privilege of writing his own biography and that of everyone who had crossed his path. Then the illustrious dead were approached and asked, after a quarter of a century spent in the peace of the grave, to give us a detailed account of the facts and events they had witnessed in their lifetime, together with the intriguing circumstances that they alone could have known. The dead complied. By a combination of the happiest coincidences, it turned out that not one of them had neglected to prepare his posthumous narrative. These wise precautions on the part of our departed contemporaries seem to have won the public's approval, and production has become all the more vigorous because the tax authorities have imposed no business-license tax on this industry.

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What, then, is the attraction of this kind of compilation? It gives already familiar facts a new narrative form, a livelier, more dramatic appearance, and a setting that is somehow mysterious. But how can we help pitying the unfortunate writer who, a few centuries from now, will be busy searching the sources for the history of our own day? What a labyrinth he will have to navigate! Caught between the productions of the school of Walter Scott and the supposedly truthful facts of spurious memoirs, what reality will he be able to grasp among so many illusions?

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Yet the names likely to capture attention are beginning to run out. One might think that the July Revolution had opened a new mine, and that, having received under the Restoration the revelations of all the Empire's little secret dramas, we were now, under the regenerating reign, about to be entrusted with the mysterious anecdotes of the restored old regime. Let us not hope for that just yet. If people are already writing, they will speak later: political memoirs need a fairly long time to ripen.

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This moment of silence, this sort of interregnum between the indiscretions of the two periods, seemed a favorable opportunity to publish the facts, anecdotes and observations that might make up the life of an artist who, after establishing a reputation in France, traveled through the different countries of Europe for twenty years. Surely any man endowed with some power of observation has only to have lived to have a great deal to say. Besides, is it not well known that seeing differently what others have already seen is really to see something new? The title Memoirs, under which M. Robertson has gathered his recollections, is, after all, more accurate than ambitious.

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If these memoirs do not offer curiosity the powerful stimulus of political revelations, neither can they fail to hold a lively interest. Arriving in Paris from Liège in the early days of the Revolution, M. Robertson, like all his contemporaries of that time, certainly found a few particular scenes to describe. It was under the reign of an all too real terror that he sought, through experiments in phantasmagoria, to destroy forever the imaginary terror of specters and visions. If that terror no longer dwelt in the capital by then, in how many departments is it not still alive today? And yet, excepting England and Germany, how far behind our civilization the other countries of Europe have remained! M. Robertson has traveled through almost all of them, and he knows how desirable in those countries is the kind of instruction his book might spread.

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The first volume of his memoirs, in which anecdotes and observations on human character mingle with outlines of some interesting procedures in physics, is devoted largely to describing experiments in phantasmagoria, their methods and their illusions, as well as the engaging history of their first appearances and their success. That success was very great. People must indeed have been astonished to see made real those wonders and invocations of which the ancient poets speak so often, which formed part of the religion and popular beliefs of antiquity, although perhaps their existence, even as products of artifice, was no more certain than that of witches' sabbaths and assemblies among modern peoples. Crowds pressed into those gloomy rooms, where one might say with Ovid:

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Errant exsangues sine corpore et ossibus umbrae.
Without bones, body or blood, the shades are seen to wander.

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There is therefore reason to hope that this part of the work will please older readers through the charm of recollection, and young people through the attraction of novelty and instruction.

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But while M. Robertson's shades pass rapidly before the spectators, flitting before their eyes for only a few seconds, as quick to disappear as to reveal themselves, as eager to return to nothingness as to emerge from it, what other phantasmagoria do the spectators themselves present to the necromancer's attentive gaze? From the members of the Directory to the sovereign who now occupies the throne of the tsars, and who was still on the verge of adolescence when he delighted in the sight of phantoms, how many heads of state, princes and diplomats have taken their places in turn before Robertson's mirror![P-N1] For he has taken his experiments to Germany, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.

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Devoted to the study of experimental physics, he also gave much of his attention to balloon voyages. Napoleon was at the height of his power when Robertson's balloon floated above places that our reverses were to make so famous! Among his ascents he numbers some very brilliant ones, at Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, Moscow... What spectacles a knowledge of the future might then have unfolded before him! Let the reader's imagination rise for a moment with the aeronaut above the Kremlin in flames, the battlefield of the Moskowa, and the Elbe engulfing our soldiers by the thousand. After watching that great army of four hundred thousand men advance in triumph, let him take in at a glance its rout, its dispersal and its disasters... Surely such scenes, seen from the height of the clouds, would seem magnificent to him, now in their grandeur, now in their desolation.

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Portugal and Spain are the last places through which M. Robertson has carried his active life. He entered Spain, so to speak, with the revolution, whose every phase he observed. He saw Riego arrive in triumph at Valencia and Granada, and mount the fatal ladder at Madrid. He followed Ferdinand as a captive to Seville, and as an absolute monarch on his return from Cádiz. If there is any place in the world where the instructive spectacle of phantasmagoria can effectively help spread philosophical ideas, it is surely in these two countries, where monks and superstition wield such authority.

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Such is the range of M. Robertson's travels and of the places to which his narratives will carry the reader. A great variety of manners and customs, and many useful remarks on the climate, temperature and physical habits of different countries, make his recollections as instructive as they are pleasant to explore. A brisk account of the principal events and of the curious, little-known occurrences in the history of ballooning, important observations acquired through his long experience of that art, and a simple, lucid explanation of its technical side, unfamiliar to people of society, will lend fresh importance to the later parts of the work. There, numerous plates and figures will offer the attentive reader further means of readily grasping even the smallest explanations.

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Thus, whether one looks to a book for pleasure or instruction, M. Robertson may be allowed to hope that his memoirs will satisfy both requirements.

Original notes

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The name mirror is given to the percale curtain on which the shades take shape, between the spectators and the physicist.

Chapter I

Ab ovo, like everyone else. First memories. An accident. The laureate of Louvain. A little electrical apparatus and a little fame. Childish and entertaining observations on natural history. A prize for painting. A decision to leave.

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Few of those who tell the story of their lives can bring themselves to leave the shell without witnesses and spare the public the egg, if one may render Horace's metaphor in this way. Happy the reader whose author cannot count a long line of ancestors whose history delays his birth by a few hundred pages! At the very least, he delights in detailing the ceremonies of his baptism, and he would arrange his funeral in advance in order to describe it, if man, especially at the age when he lives only in the past, did not recoil in terror from every thought of death.

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This way of writing about oneself is less unreasonable than one might suppose. What could be more natural than to seek a whole, a complete work, between the two limits assigned to our existence? The most distant places are usually those a traveler most enjoys recalling. The old man resembles him in this: he turns his eyes as far as he can from the destination he has just reached. He arms himself, so to speak, with a telescope to glimpse his first steps and divine his earliest sensations. He wants to see himself, to show himself in his entirety; and when philosophy guides him, he is not afraid to set the gradual development of his physical and mental faculties beside the progressive decline that nature has prepared for them before bringing their mechanism to a complete halt. By this means, moreover, one enlarges the circle of facts whose historian one appoints oneself, and becomes a contemporary narrator of the events surrounding one's cradle. Is this method not to some readers' taste? Nothing could be easier than to avoid its tedium. People read so much nowadays, and above all so quickly, that a mere glance at a work decides them. They leap straight over the swaddling clothes, turn the pages of adolescence and youth without stopping, and, if manhood offers little attraction, pass on to old age and make a cheerful exit through the table of contents.

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I shall therefore not deny myself the pleasure of confirming the testimony of the Biographie des Contemporains, which has me born at Liège in 1763, the son of a wealthy merchant. No prodigy, however, marked my birth. Heaven doubtless felt it owed me no particular attention. Yet, destined as I was to produce some rather brilliant optical effects and to explain, by recreating them, illusions with which antiquity still deceived us, perhaps it would not have been out of place for some outward sign, some light, non-burning flame like the one that brushed Numa's hair without singeing it, to prophesy my mission.[C1-N1] Does it not seem that heaven is beginning to distrust the earth? In truth, too many people are lying in wait for miracles, ready to catch them in the act. We shall see no more of them.

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In trying to determine the furthest point to which the memory of a man of my age can reach, I find in my mind an impression dating from a time when I cannot have been more than a year old. I can still see myself in my father's carriage, amazed and delighted by the festivities held on the election of Charles d'Outremont as prince-bishop of Liège. The brilliance of the fireworks and illuminations, the sound of the music, the cries of the people: all this still shines before my eyes or rings in my ears. I remember that my grandmother held me on her lap for much of the night, without my little imagination being able to calm itself; only extreme weariness made me surrender to sleep. I go into these small details to show how cautiously we must conduct ourselves in the presence of children, since emotions we might suppose to be quite fleeting nevertheless engrave themselves on such young minds and leave traces that a whole lifetime cannot erase.

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I must also say a few words about an accident that happened to me at seven: I broke my leg while sliding on the ice. Perhaps this was the origin of my taste for mechanics and physics. A sedentary life sat ill with a very active, very restless imagination and a lively disposition. I satisfied both by cultivating the arts, music and painting, and by a continual, passionate study of the sciences I have just named. Here is a curious coincidence in connection with that accident: something of the same kind happened to me a few years ago. I was crossing the boulevard des Italiens when two dogs running at full speed struck me violently and knocked me down. I dislocated my hip and was confined to bed for a long time. Does it not seem strange that these two accidents should have marked the beginning and end of a career that took me all over Europe, during which I often risked my life without coming to harm? My aerial voyages number fifty-nine. Certainly, had I tried to foresee the dangers I might run, I should never have imagined them in the causes of the falls I have just described.

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Condemned to do little walking, I began my studies in a very favorable frame of mind. But had I needed any stimulus, nothing could have acted more powerfully on me than the triumphal spectacle honoring a young man of Liège that I witnessed at the age of ten. It made such an impression on my mind that I can recall nothing like it in all my youth. No doubt the prize-givings at the schools of Paris, and especially that of the general competition, are quite capable of electrifying young imaginations. Yet they cannot give the prizewinners so lofty an idea of the importance their fellow citizens attach to their budding glory. They receive the applause of an assembly; at Liège, the congratulations of a city. In France, a family takes pride in their triumph; at Liège, their country does. The laurel wreath is therefore the object of ambition for all the young men who, after completing their schooling, go to study philosophy for two years at the University of Louvain. The laureate's native city shares in his triumph and derives signal honor from it. His professors bring him home in great pomp. All his fellow students, on horseback and wearing blue cloaks, ride out a league to meet him. The magistrates await him to offer congratulations and, on behalf of his compatriots, some vessel of silver gilt or silver, and it is amid acclamations that he reaches his father's threshold. One can feel how well such honors paid to learning must encourage a taste for it and spread it even among the humblest classes. I should not be surprised if the Netherlands had the most generally enlightened population in Europe.

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Like the other young men, then, I went to take a course in philosophy at Louvain. On my return I became friends with a very agreeable and learned man whose father had invented a burning mirror that I shall have occasion to describe later. This was M. Villette, highly skilled and renowned for making optical instruments and the various kinds of apparatus used in physics. His conversation developed in me, to a very high degree, a love, I might even say a passion, for that science. A clergyman had given me a taste for it several years earlier. I could smell the arrival of the venerable Abbé Henkart a league away, for he was always preceded by a strong odor of old books. Indeed, whichever point of the compass he happened to be facing in his study, one was sure to find Fleury's Ecclesiastical History on his right and Materialism Refuted by Itself on his left, just as, when one looks at a map with north at the top, east is inevitably on one side and west on the other. After an opening exchange in which the words Pentateuch, Genesis, Deuteronomy and so forth never failed to play a part, the good abbé would entertain me with more amusing stories. I listened open-mouthed when he told me that he had seen sparks leap from a man's nose. You may imagine that my eyes never left my companion's nose, as though the marvel were about to be repeated. One day he gave me a rather inaccurate description of an electrical apparatus. The idea came to me to obtain one, and before long I possessed one, though of very small dimensions.

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Perhaps you have sometimes noticed a small child dying to wake a large mastiff and invite it to play, yet held back by the fear of being bitten. Such was I before my apparatus. How I longed to see the spark shine! Yet I dared not draw it out. I was frightened of this power placed in my hands. I went back and forth, calculating imaginary chances of danger. It seemed to me that, at the first turn of the machine, lightning would flash and thunder would crash. Fortunately, my hairdresser came to dress my hair. I told him of my perplexities, shared my knowledge of electricity with him, and almost my terrors as well. Curiosity won. He approached the apparatus and, with all the precautions of an inexperienced gunner firing his piece from a distance, made a spark leap out. We both drew back. A second and a third reassured us, and after a few days the danger had become no more than a game to me, then a source of study. Indeed, I pursued it so persistently that, without consulting any book, I discovered most of the electrical phenomena and uses of the apparatus.

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Before leaving for Louvain, I had obtained the works of Abbé Nollet and Sigaud de Lafond. My conversations with M. Villette finished turning my head, and I dreamed of nothing but experiments. One day, in concert with a few young men, I performed one on a group of men and women dancing in a circle beneath my windows. Without the dancers' knowledge, one end of their chain led to my apparatus in a ground-floor room. Everyone had barely taken their places when the instantaneous shock was felt. Each cried out at the same moment. The young women ran away, and, had it not been for my accomplices' laughter, the shock would have been attributed to the presence of the devil. In a short time I acquired a reputation. I multiplied my experiments in company, taking such care over them that their success was never in doubt. I became the little Charles of Liège, and had the glory of attracting to these experiments the highest magistrates of my city, the two serving burgomasters.

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I do not know whether anyone has tried to obtain results by applying electricity to vegetation. At that time I subjected various plants to it in the hope of hastening their development. My attempts were fruitless, and I do not think it useless to record that observation here. Nor do I believe that any success can be obtained by this means, because of the way electricity acts: as is well known, it passes entirely to the surface of bodies.[C1-N2]

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Observation was the continual occupation of my youth. To this gift of nature, this mania if you will, I joined, despite my liveliness, an invincible patience. I raised insects and silkworms in my room. No stage of their various transformations escaped my attention. Caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly: I painted them all as they passed into new forms. I knew nothing of this branch of natural history, and so I could distinguish the species, whose names I did not know, only by the plants on which they fed. I called one, for example, the carrot butterfly, and another the potato butterfly. I brought my collection of little pictures to Paris and thought I would astonish the members of the Linnaean Society with the novelty of my discoveries. I need hardly add how much my innocence made them laugh at my expense, or how much I laughed myself on learning how long the complete history of silkworms and butterflies had been known.

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Here is another observation in natural history, perhaps less belated than the last. One day I noticed a multitude of dark specks on the water filling a trough. I approached, and the specks disappeared. I moved away, and the surface was covered with them again. Another disappearance took place as soon as I returned. I could make nothing of this peculiar phenomenon. I repeated the same experiment several times, and at last realized that these black specks were so many mosquitoes which, still enclosed in their cases, went to the bottom of the water. I took care not to cast a shadow as I approached, so their sudden flight was the result of their vigilance. This multitude of imperceptible eyes saw me all at once, and I could see nothing more.

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In favorable weather these insects, ready to emerge, came to the surface carried in their transparent chrysalises, as I have just described. The upper part split open, and they came out fluttering little shining wings, which they took care not to wet. One last attachment held them to the bottom of the case; to free themselves they tried a gentle swaying motion that would not upset their balance. Yet the slightest breath overturned them, and great numbers drowned. Those that managed to take flight without touching the water were safe. They became inhabitants of the air and continued their existence in this new element.

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What a peculiar pleasure I took in these observations! How often, on returning from school, did I leave the sentences of my exercises unfinished to watch for the emergence of an imprisoned grub! Its covering would split; through the opening, the insect or butterfly, first unfolding the antennae bent back over its body, then gradually rising, freed itself from its bonds, took a few steps while spreading its wings, and at last escaped captivity. One day I thought I had chanced upon an interesting phenomenon. Just when I expected to see a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis, my sharp eyesight detected a very small fly making an almost imperceptible opening for itself. Naturalists call this microscopic fly an ichneumon, I believe. The meeting of two insects so small would seem almost a miracle, and the reproduction of the species impossible, had nature not provided for it: the first fly to escape is a male, and each of the others, reached by the first at the very instant of its emergence, flies away fertilized.

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Although I was strongly drawn to the study of physics, I did not neglect the cultivation of an art that might offer me a livelihood, all the more necessary because my father's fortune had just been imperiled by the excessive cost of working a coal mine. If physics was my only passion, I had at least a very strong taste for painting, and some rather brilliant successes to encourage my efforts. The painting school at Liège set Apollo Slaying the Serpent Python as the subject of a composition. I won the prize, a gold medal, which Prince Welbruck presented to me with his own hands at a formal meeting of the Society of Emulation.

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Yet this was not the direction in which my parents had wished my career to go. There was an ecclesiastical benefice in the family, and they would have been pleased to see me take holy orders so that I might inherit it. I confess that I lacked everything needed for that kind of vocation. I therefore resolved to give free rein to my inclinations and seek a wider field for my education. M. Brisson was then teaching at the Collège de France. This physicist was the nephew of Abbé Nollet, tutor to the royal children, who had revived the taste for the physical sciences in France. His chief service to them had been to bring order to their elementary principles. M. Villette, a friend of Abbé Nollet, encouraged me to go to Paris to attend the lectures of MM. Brisson and Charles, and gave me a letter of introduction to M. Pascal-Tasquin, maker of the king's harpsichords. With painting as my means of support and physics as the object of my study and amusement, my preparations were soon complete, and I made ready to leave the city of Liège.

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But can I leave my native city in this way without devoting a few pages to it? Walter Scott introduced a description of it into his picture of the reign of Louis XI; I can hardly do less than the Scottish novelist. Besides, Liège, now lost within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, may perhaps have no history of its own, and I know of no native of Liège who has had occasion to speak of it in works published in France. The history of coal is naturally connected with it. And I ask you, would a single volume suffice to praise coal as it deserves, now that it gives life to thousands of steam engines, that we aspire to cover our cities with its thick, blackish smoke, and that its purified heat is beginning to enliven the poor man's hearth and the bourgeois fireside? In this industrial age, it is a piece of good fortune to have been born among the coalfields and to be able to describe the methods of extracting coal.

Original notes

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I take this opportunity, at least, to recall that in that same year, 1763, the Opéra theater was consumed by flames. But I admit that I in no way credit my birth with that accident.

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Here is what I find on this subject in M. Bailly's little Manual of Physics: “It is known that electricity stimulates vegetation, increases perspiration in animals, and evaporation from fruits, leaves and, in general, all bodies. Electrical discharges also change the color of certain delicate flowers, and produce a multitude of chemical combinations and decompositions.”

Chapter II

Walter Scott and the people of Liège. Their privileges and rebellions. The great favor enjoyed by beer. The history of coal and its extraction. Early steam engines. Deville and Renkin. The painter Lairesse. Grétry. The Revolution of 1830.

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I have no wish either to write the history of Liège or to describe its topography. But our present form of government prompts me to say a few words about that of the city, and about its ancient liberties. Who has not read those rallying cries recalled by the people of Liège in Walter Scott: ‘Our liberties, our privileges, or death!’ Who has not read that they were the most untamable of rebels, not even excepting the Gauls? These privileges, these liberties, of which the people of Liège were so jealous, deserved, we must admit, all the courage and perseverance with which they defended them. Readers will doubtless be surprised to learn that, for centuries, these rights had included what, in nineteenth-century France, constitutes lawful order and representative government.

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I pass over the ancient privilege of nobility, the least disputable of all and at the same time the least insisted upon, since it was shared by every inhabitant of Liège and conferred no particular distinction. The other privileges ruled out confiscation, that barbarous law which so long stained our legal codes, and upheld individual liberty.

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Thus, an inhabitant of Liège condemned to death for a crime lost his honor and his life, but his property remained with his heirs.

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The people of Liège could not be arrested for debt except under a judgment delivered by a competent judge; nor, except in cases of crimes against the state, could they be arrested for a crime without a warrant for their arrest.

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As for houses within cloisters, or otherwise within the privileged precincts of collegiate churches and monasteries, they were places of sanctuary: whatever crime a person had committed, he could not be arrested there.

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When a citizen accused of a crime punishable by bodily penalty or banishment was made the subject of an arrest warrant, he could not be seized in a citizen’s house without the assistance of the magistrates’ key, which the burgomasters could not refuse when the warrant was presented to them.

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Finally, the foremost right of the city of Liège was that the prince could in no circumstances, and under no pretext, impose taxes on the property or persons of his subjects without the unanimous consent of the three Estates.

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The people, with an interest in securing this privilege, always strove to maintain it. ‘To trace things to their sources,’ says a writer of the century before last, ‘the misconduct of the officers of the princes of Liège led the people to create two magistrates, the burgomasters, for policing, administering public funds, and preserving their privileges, usages and customs; and to insist upon regulating the manner of their election. Imagining themselves the natural guardians of their city, they believed that they ought to be, and indeed were, the guardians of the keys to its gates. They resisted as far as they could the construction of a citadel which they knew to be useless for the defense of the city. These are the four sources of that endless number of popular disturbances, revolts and disorders with which the history of Liège is filled, and which cause its people to be regarded as restless, turbulent, seditious spirits, naturally inclined to rebellion; as people without discipline and incapable of receiving it, declared enemies of good order, tranquility and peace.’

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I thought that the many readers of Quentin Durward, should they look through my book, would enjoy these details. It goes without saying that neither my compatriots nor I accept the compliments in those last lines, which the earlier ones sufficiently refute. Certainly, if the claim went no further than that the people of Liège are hotheaded and easily stirred, I should find it difficult not to agree, although these qualities belong much more readily to southerners than to people of the North. Perhaps they are all the more surprising in this country because we drink less of that foaming, sparkling liquor whose homeland is Champagne, and which seems to have so little effect on the ponderous people of that province.

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The foam that does not sparkle, but rises majestically in our broad glasses, is produced by the double fermentation of hops and barley. Liège may be described at once as an immense coal mine and an immense brewery; the products of these two industries represent, so to speak, fire and water. Drinking plain water at Liège, however good it may be, inspires a kind of universal horror. Children learn to suck beer along with their milk; and when their nurses, who are usually their mothers, have no milk, beer takes its place.

[C2-11 | source PDF 37–38]
Coal, likewise, is the only fuel in use, and no one goes without it. At Liège the poor are at least sure of dying neither of thirst nor of cold. This economical form of heating has begun to find favor in France in recent years. But most Parisians who use coal, as they use so many other articles of consumption, often without suspecting the cost at which they are obtained, have little idea of the hardship, labor and danger involved in extracting this black stone sold so cheaply. While they enjoy its fierce yet peaceful warmth, I may surely take the opportunity to give them a brief history of it. This is the sort of practical knowledge that cannot be spread too widely or repeated too often. In scientific books it benefits only studious minds; whenever possible, it must be placed in the path of people of society. The same should be done with a great deal of general knowledge, which could be brought out of its specialized fields until, without our noticing, it became part of the most ordinary and familiar understanding. That is the way to enlighten an entire people. First, then, here is the legendary origin of the discovery of coal.

[C2-12 | source PDF 38–38]
During the reign of Albert de Cuik, a certain old man, venerable for his white hair and beard and dressed in white, was passing, so the story goes, along a street called Coché. He spoke to a blacksmith who was complaining that, though he worked with all his strength, he earned nothing, or at least very little, because of the great expense of the wood he had to buy. ‘Go, my friend, to the neighboring mountain where the monks live, and there you will find black veins of an earth very well suited to heating iron.’ At that instant the old man vanished. According to some chronicles, this event took place in 1200; other narrators have embellished it to a greater or lesser degree.

[C2-13 | source PDF 38–39]
Here we may observe how readily men have always given a miraculous origin to important discoveries whose secret they happen to catch from nature. They seem to doubt that such great benefits could arise quite simply from the order of the world. How can we be surprised at the yoke that magic, under its various names, has so long and so successfully imposed upon mankind, when men are born with such an inclination to superstition? Besides, it is not very difficult to guess how the tale we have just read might have arisen. It would be more difficult if no monks appeared in it.

[C2-14 | source PDF 39–40]
One writer sought a natural explanation for the event, suggesting that the word meaning angel had been mistaken for the word which, in the same language, means an Englishman. The old man would then have been an English traveler. This interpretation prompted an inquiry into which of the two peoples, the English or the people of Liège, had been the first to use coal. I am glad, for the honor of my native city, that the distinction remained with it: Liège was thus the first city in Europe to know coal and to use it.[C2-N1] This was only natural. Its inhabitants walk, quite literally, upon an immense coalfield. For six centuries and more, coal has been taken from mines around the city, and one can scarcely tell that extraction has begun. The question is therefore less one of finding a mine than of finding a good one, not exposed to flooding.

[C2-15 | source PDF 40–40]
Once a site has been chosen, work begins by sinking a shaft fifteen, eighteen or twenty feet in diameter, lining it with masonry as the digging proceeds. In other words, these shafts are begun where ordinary wells are finished: at the wellhead.

[C2-16 | source PDF 40–40]
They are sunk as deep as possible, and when at last the point is reached at which the proprietor thinks it best to stop, the foundations of the shaft are laid. Do not imagine that we are speaking of forty, fifty, sixty or a hundred feet in depth. The shallowest are ordinarily two hundred feet deep; others are three hundred, several from four to seven hundred, and some as much as two thousand feet.

[C2-17 | source PDF 40–43]
These shafts are covered by a shed large enough not only to keep out the rain but also to shelter the men and horses needed to haul out the spoil while the shaft is being dug. This is done by a machine known in the local language as a hernaz, turned by several horses.

[C2-18 | source PDF 43–43]
Judged by our ordinary ideas, miners are at once the most intrepid and the most unfortunate of mortals. Once they have reached the point I have described, they truly turn into rabbits or badgers: having opened the breast of the earth, they must open paths for themselves to explore its veins. The engraving I have included here, whose proportions are those of the Berger colliery that belonged to my father, will show the reader their kind of work at a glance. (See Plate I.) The black bands represent the seams of coal; the white ones, those from which the coal has been extracted; the bands partly black and partly white, those only begun. Finally, the other colors indicate the thicker or thinner layers of earth or stone separating the seams.

[C2-19 | source PDF 43–44]
The workmen therefore follow these seams, making a hole as best they can, widening it and raising its roof, sparing no effort to put themselves in the least cramped position possible. But even the least cramped is always extremely so. They think themselves comfortable when, lying on their left sides and bending their necks, they can hold and use their hammers in their right hands. They advance in this way as long as the seam yields coal, and the resulting underground passages sometimes run for more than half a league, though they are never more than three or four feet high. Before reaching the place where the previous day’s work stopped, the men must therefore cover this whole distance on their hands and knees. We have just seen the posture in which they work, so it is impossible for them to stand upright while at their labor. Before satisfying that desire, should any of them feel it, they would have to walk bent double or crawl for at least half an hour to cover the distance they had left behind them on the way in.

[C2-20 | source PDF 44–45]
As they cut this vegetable stone, their children, their only companions, carry it to the edge of the seam. These children are scarcely nine or ten before they are sent down into the pits. Their first exercise is to learn to walk on their hands as well as their feet. They put the coal into little carts, or even sledges, fitted with straps which they pass around their necks. Then, walking on hands and feet, their hands supported for the purpose by little two-legged stools or crutches, they drag them to the burre, or shaft, from which the coal is raised by large cranes and other machines. Bent over in this way, the children move with incredible speed. After a fortnight, the exercise is an amusement to them, a game in which they take great pleasure.

[C2-21 | source PDF 45–46]
The miners enter the pit at six in the morning and leave at noon; others enter at noon and leave at six in the evening. If these shafts, viewed from above, look terrifying in their depth and darkness, one may imagine that the miners’ emergence must offer a rather entertaining spectacle. Picture them springing from their baskets onto the ground, fathers and children, each carrying on his head a candle stuck into a lump of clay, their only substitute for daylight in those dark passages. All are so blackened that the coalmen of the Paris quays would, to use a fashionable expression, be fashionables of whiteness beside them. You will judge that such a spectacle offers a fairly convincing parody of devils coming out of hell.

[C2-22 | source PDF 46–46]
The women never go down into the pits. Most of them, known as botteresses, sell the coal their husbands cut to the poorer people, carrying it in back-baskets; they also attend to the household. They are so many Proserpinas upon whom black Plutos lavish kisses that leave visible marks. Indeed, conjugal caresses may well be the sweetest relaxation of these hardworking men, since all of them possess numerous heirs.

[C2-23 | source PDF 46–46]
Their earnings bear no proportion to their arduous labor. Seventy years ago their wage was twenty-six to thirty sols; today it is no higher when one allows for the decline in the value of money since that time. They receive from fifty sous to three francs a day. For so meager a reward, men not only undertake so difficult a trade but expose themselves to so many dangers!

[C2-24 | source PDF 46–47]
Those who earn their living at this trade formerly had to contend with two terrible enemies: water and fire. The latter is no longer to be feared, or is much less so than formerly. Yet I must describe the danger it posed and the rather curious means by which it was fought.

[C2-25 | source PDF 47–47]
The exhalations from water and earth, lacking the force to escape from these underground passages and reach the mouth of the pit, remain there, gather together, and gradually grow hot through the admixture of sulfurous emanations. When this inflammable vapor is driven toward one of the candles carried by each workman, it catches fire as quickly as gunpowder and gives off a sulfur-colored smoke, very foul-smelling and capable of suffocating everyone exposed to it. Here is the peculiar remedy formerly employed against this danger. Since the fire I have described is fed and sustained only by air, it must be beaten and stirred to disperse the sulfur with which the air is charged. Unwashed cloth made of unretted hemp was enough to protect the attackers against the subterranean flame. Armed with rods and sticks, they then attacked it, struck it and pursued it in every direction until it dispersed with the air that carried it.

[C2-26 | source PDF 48–48]
For many years a very simple means has prevented all this danger and trouble. At some distance from the mine shaft, a brick chimney is built to a height of nearly a hundred feet above ground. Beneath it an air shaft extends far into the mine (fig. 1), lined with masonry like the first shaft but much narrower. A burning brazier is continually lowered and raised through this passage, establishing and maintaining in the pit the constant current of air necessary for breathing.

[C2-27 | source PDF 48–49]
The other enemy, which a means has been found to contain but not entirely to conquer, is water. We know that the earth’s interior holds this liquid everywhere. In many places it gathers in larger or smaller reservoirs which the miners call baths. A few imprudent blows of the hammer are enough to give it an outlet through which it rushes with such violence that escape is impossible when the bath lies a little above the lower level of the seam. Great disasters have sometimes followed the sudden breaking of the last barrier that held it back. Miners therefore take the greatest care to discover in advance which places may contain reservoirs. Experience passed down from father to son has made them so skilled in this that a blow of the hammer tells them how far they are from water.

[C2-28 | source PDF 49–49]
Yet the recent story of the brave Coffin’s devotion shows that even this skill can fail.[C2-N2]

[C2-29 | source PDF 49–50]
Here is another precaution that allows the danger to be tested more securely and overcome. Before beginning a seam, the men bore into it with an auger several feet long. A man stands ready with bundles of tow; as soon as water appears, the auger is withdrawn, the hole is plugged along its entire depth, and the seam abandoned. If, on the contrary, no water appears, work begins on the seam. When the point reached by the auger has been passed, the same test is repeated, and so on, test after test, to the other end of the seam.

[C2-30 | source PDF 50–50]
These masses and currents of water, bursting out impetuously as soon as they find a passage, resemble the swift jet of blood from a torn artery. But within the earth, as within the human body, there is also an infinite multitude of little veins which a thousand accidents may rupture, and do rupture continually, without producing great danger. The water from this seepage and from various springs collects at the bottom of the pit. Formerly it was raised in a great tub, but improvements in machinery and the powerful use of steam have made this work easier and less expensive.

[C2-31 | source PDF 51–52]
My father was one of the first to attempt to adapt a steam engine to this purpose. Water filling a neighboring shaft found a way to seep through a seam and then flood abundantly into the Berger shaft. This was an unexpected stroke of luck for the owner of the neighboring shaft, for which my father’s now served as a drain. He was able to work his mine and made a fortune, while the same event ruined my father. Ordinarily, no attempt was made to resist the invasion of water once it had firmly established itself. It was left in full possession of the mine, whose workings were immediately abandoned. That was what my father’s partners did. He alone undertook to overcome this formidable obstacle, but his financial resources, though he possessed a respectable fortune, proved insufficient. Let me at least take some amusement, in return for the money he lost, in describing the construction of an enormous steam engine which pumped out great quantities of water but died of the effort, as one might say of a poor man. Imagine a boiler as large as a room fifteen to eighteen feet across; a frightful noise, audible an eighth of a league away and terrifying to children; and thick columns of smoke, rising as much from the steam escaping through several cracks as from the furnace. The whole machine shook continually and looked like a house about to collapse, so crude and imperfect was its mechanism! Its enormous appetite for fuel could surely not have been supplied for long had that fuel not been taken from directly beneath it. What a distance separates this crude construction from modern pumps, in which the power of a square inch is established and a line yields a calculated force!

[C2-32 | source PDF 52–52]
The machine, as I have said, could not withstand the strain, and my father was obliged to give up the struggle. At my age, what I regretted most were the various fossil stones and the beautiful, well-preserved impressions of leaves on the coal which the workmen took pleasure in bringing me.

[C2-33 | source PDF 52–53]
I shall not discuss the accidents once so common in mines, or the recent improvements to certain aspects of the work, to the making of lamps, and so forth. But I shall say a word about the weight of the chain supporting the enormous working basket. In this square basket, the men occupy all four sides, sitting on a projecting plank; others stand on the edges and hold the chains at the four corners. In this way they descend the shaft some twenty at a time. One day, in my presence, when they were already some distance down, the great chain slipped from its roller onto the axle. The noise, echoed through the cavity, was terrifying. By inconceivable good fortune, despite the violence of the jolt, none of the men was thrown out, though all had run that risk. Soon one of them was seen climbing up the chain and appearing at the mouth of the shaft. He was not allowed to come out, despite his countless pleas. Had he been permitted to do so, probably none of the others would have been willing to continue the journey or descend again once outside; for they were so terrified that their prayers and groans reached us above. It took several hours to remedy this mishap, which had no further consequences.

[C2-34 | source PDF 53–54]
On another day, when I was not present, a dreadful accident occurred. The mouth of the shaft can have no guardrail. A workman coming up finds his little child there, holding out its arms to him. Before responding to its affection, he bends down to pick something up; as he rises, he knocks his unfortunate child into the shaft, and it falls to the bottom. Indeed, the many accidents that occur in mines would make a sad history.

[C2-35 | source PDF 54–55]
Everything I have just described would hardly suggest much competition or eagerness for employment in the coal pits. Yet that would be a mistaken judgment. Hereditary succession, perhaps a necessity in the earliest days, has now become a qualification. The assurance of continual work, the ease of stepping into a position already prepared, habits acquired in youth, and the natural preference for a trade found, so to speak, ready to hand, mean that workers are plentiful. Statutes were long ago established to require certain qualifications of miners, and to impose a fee upon natives and a higher fee upon foreigners. Thus, in the country of Liège, credentials are needed for admission to mine work, at which other states employ only convicted criminals. These statutes even contain a rather curious article: ‘Foreigners may be admitted only upon producing properly drawn certificates from the magistrates or officers of their places of birth, proving that they were born in lawful wedlock, are not of ill repute, and profess the Catholic religion.’

[C2-36 | source PDF 55–55]
We see that in every age the devout have drawn this earthly consequence from the divine axiom, outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation: outside the Catholic Church there is no work.

[C2-37 | source PDF 55–55]
As for bastards, their exclusion served only to make them pay double, a thoroughly orthodox means of legitimizing them!

[C2-38 | source PDF 55–55]
Having given these details about the soil of my country, which I thought would be of interest, I should add a few touches to the imperfect sketch of my compatriots’ character and qualities with which this chapter began. I would rightly be unforgiven if I omitted praise of their particular aptitude for the mechanical arts and their no less brilliant success in the fine arts.

[C2-39 | source PDF 55–56]
Indeed, the people of Liège have long enjoyed a reputation as highly skilled mechanics, perhaps the most skilled in Europe. The machine of Marly, which seemed so admirable before steam was applied to hydraulics, was the work of M. Deville of Liège, assisted by an excellent workman named Renkin, likewise a native of that country. The glory of their achievement belongs all the more to their homeland because they drew great assistance from various machines used throughout it, where running water had been put to countless useful purposes to ease the labor of workmen. We owe to this province, and to a craftsman named Grisard, the art of slitting iron: that is, reducing it at little expense to very thin rods.

[C2-40 | source PDF 56–56]
In the last century its inhabitants prided themselves on boring gun barrels with greater speed, neatness and accuracy than anywhere else in the world. At the same period, a smith in the town of Spa had invented a way to restore every kind of bronze artillery piece, whether spiked or burst, to complete working order. This method saved immense sums for the States General of the United Provinces.

[C2-41 | source PDF 56–57]
The people of Liège have excelled no less in the fine arts. Most of them are painters or musicians. In painting especially, they can count a great many illustrious men. They can name Bertholet Flemaël, Gérard Douffeit, Gérard de Lairesse, Guillaume Carlier, Lambert Lombard, the medalist Warin, the celebrated engraver Natalis, and many others. But Lairesse’s name shines brightest. He brings too much honor to my native city, and his history offers too many curious particulars, for me to refrain from giving a few details of his life.

[C2-42 | source PDF 57–58]
Born with a keen taste for the arts, Lairesse displayed from his earliest years those first flashes of genius that precede the ordinary development of intelligence and judgment. By his fifteenth year he seemed capable of appreciating Bertholet’s works, which he took as his model, with exquisite feeling. Scarcely twenty, he so dismayed the artists of Aix-la-Chapelle by the superiority of his brush that he was obliged to leave the city to avoid becoming a victim of their hostility. An immense number of highly esteemed pictures soon placed him among the most renowned painters. Painter, poet and musician at once, Lairesse had the inclinations that ordinarily accompany such brilliant gifts of imagination, and almost always seem to follow from them. Thus his love of good food and sensual pleasures cost him dearly. Gallantry even made this distinguished mind a veritable dandy. He devoted so much attention to his appearance that it was not unusual to see him change his clothes several times a day. As we see, he combined the three qualities best suited to ruining even the wealthy.

[C2-43 | source PDF 58–58]
A young Polish adventuress aroused his first passion. His family’s remonstrances nevertheless tore him away from this violent love, and after long struggles with himself he finally resolved to seek forgetfulness in distance. A prolonged absence cured him; he returned to Liège only when the cure was complete. But how could an ardent imagination and a susceptible heart long escape danger? An acquaintance with two women from Maastricht, who had come to seek their fortunes at Liège, soon led him to give one of them, a woman of gentle and attractive appearance, a written promise of marriage. Further reproaches from his family and friends once more succeeded in turning him away from an alliance whose disgrace he began to foresee. But the adventure was not to end there.

[C2-44 | source PDF 58–60]
The abandoned beauty plotted revenge against her faithless lover and enlisted her sister’s help. The sister entered fully into her plans and chose to make herself the heroine of the plot. Arming herself with a dagger and a sword concealed beneath her dress, she went with her sister to find Lairesse. The woman to whom he had promised marriage showed him the promise and asked whether he intended to fulfill it. Scarcely had Lairesse answered no when the sister rushed upon him and struck him in the throat with her dagger. Enraged by his wound and the blood covering him, Lairesse drew his sword, met with resistance he had been far from expecting, and felt so humiliated that he no longer tried to spare his adversary. After a long fight, he ran her through twice. Despite the depth of her wounds, this courageous girl managed to escape and drag herself to a neighboring house, where she was tended. The affair led to a warrant for Lairesse’s arrest. He took refuge with the Dominicans and soon resolved to marry a relative of his brother-in-law who had greatly helped him in his misfortune. They settled at Bois-le-Duc, where Lairesse’s disorderly conduct soon plunged him into such poverty that he sometimes lacked the necessities of life. His works, however good, found no buyers; in vain he hung them in the window of his miserable room. At last a picture offered for sale in this way caught the eye of an Amsterdam citizen named Hooft. He asked to see the artist and bought the work very cheaply. Passing through Bois-le-Duc again, the same man saw another picture at the window, more beautiful than the first. This time he was honorable enough to pay what it was worth, and offered to take Lairesse to Amsterdam. There this skilled artist soon became renowned and could not keep up with the work demanded of him.[C2-N3]

[C2-45 | source PDF 60–61]
About this time the French had advanced as far as Utrecht and spread alarm through the neighborhood of Amsterdam. One day, having left some of his reason in his drinking pots, Lairesse was returning home humming French verses of his own composition. Some Dutchmen took him for an enemy spy. Three days in the strictest solitary confinement at the bottom of an underground dungeon made an impression strong enough to recall him to a less dissipated life. From then on he devoted far more time to his profession and to etching, the branch in which he was most successful. Excessive application to study weakened his sight, and he finally became completely blind. Yet the liveliness of his mind would not allow him to remain idle. He opened a school, and large numbers came to hear his methodical exposition of the principles of an art he had practiced so gloriously. He also set down in a separate treatise all the precepts capable of forming a perfect painter. Though deprived of sight, he wrote it himself, without another person’s hand, with the aid of a pencil and a prepared canvas. The treatise was later printed and helped train many accomplished painters. Lairesse lived blind for more than twenty years and died in 1711.

[C2-46 | source PDF 62–62]
To follow chronological order, I ought to have said a few words about Bertholet Flamaël, who earned the name Raphael of the Netherlands. For the ceiling of Louis XIV’s chamber in the Tuileries palace, he painted the king being carried into the air by spirits. Several of his works adorned the galleries of the palace of Versailles. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Paris, and even given a professorship in that celebrated academy. In his final years, a naturally lively and cheerful disposition gave way to the darkest melancholy and a great distaste for the painting he had loved so much. He died in 1775, a canon of Liège.

[C2-47 | source PDF 62–63]
Few artists have won so great a name as Michel Natalis, the engraver from Liège, who established the superiority of his burin in Italy, France, the Netherlands and Germany. Archduke Leopold of Austria, elected head of the Empire, wished to have his portrait engraved by this artist. When the first plate was presented to him, he wanted to see how Natalis handled the burin. The prince was so delighted by his dexterity that he gave him a considerable sum, honored him with a gold medal, and appointed him his engraver in ordinary. So many favors quite overwhelmed Natalis. He forgot his burin as he left the emperor’s apartment. Coming to himself and remembering that he had left it on the table, he retraced his steps and knocked at the door. The emperor opened it himself and said, ‘I know what you are looking for, Natalis.’ Going to the table, he picked up the burin and handed it to him, adding, ‘Remember, Natalis, that an emperor has served you.’

[C2-48 | source PDF 63–63]
Louis XIV, eager to attract so renowned an artist to France, offered him a considerable pension and lodging in the Louvre. A courier was sent to Liège, but arrived almost at the very moment when Natalis died of a throat illness accompanied by symptoms which gave him reason to believe he had been poisoned. This was in 1670.

[C2-49 | source PDF 63–63]
One of the men who certainly brought the greatest honor to the country of Liège was the celebrated composer Grétry, born in the city itself on February 11, 1741, and dead at Paris in 1813.

[C2-50 | source PDF 63–64]
Everyone knows that Grétry long lived at the Hermitage in Montmorency, made famous by Jean-Jacques’s stay there. Among the things shown to its many visitors are a few utensils used by these two great men. It was in this retreat that Grétry’s heirs kept his heart when the city of Liège demanded fulfillment of the musician’s bequest of the noblest part of himself to his native city. The demand led to a lengthy lawsuit. M. Flamand, the owner of the Hermitage, spared no effort to retain possession of so precious a relic. Liège won its case, and Grétry’s heart, so dear to his fellow citizens, was received there with all due solemnity.

[C2-51 | source PDF 64–64]
Some newspapers did not spare the people of Liège harsh reproaches on this occasion. At the moment when this sacred trust was handed over, on July 5, M. Le Joyand, said to have been an old friend of Grétry’s, gave a speech whose principal passages follow:

[C2-52 | source PDF 64–65]
‘In vain did Grétry wish his mortal remains to stay in this solitude. In vain was their noblest part consecrated here by the presence of an august princess. In vain did this admirable daughter of our kings graciously permit her bust to be solemnly installed in memory of her appearance here, to assure us that the ashes of the troubadour of Richard Cœur-de-Lion would never be disturbed. A destructive hammer now strikes the funerary monument raised by filial piety. Grétry shudders in his grave. But here is what he himself declares:

[C2-53 | source PDF 65–65]
‘“I relinquish the remnants of a material existence that no longer belongs to me. Let this fruit of death fall to those men who, having seen me born among them, never encouraged me in childhood. France is my true country; the French alone are my compatriots. It is they, it is their princes, who brought forth my genius, who heaped honors and benefits upon me.[C2-N4] Go, unfeeling dust; go without me to a city that has become foreign to me, to satisfy a few men animated by a sterile pride: Sine me, pulvis, ibis in urbem alienam!”’

[C2-54 | source PDF 65–66]
‘What connection,’ adds the author of the article in which I find this fragment, ‘what connection, indeed, is there between Liège and Grétry? He was born there; he was very poor there and badly beaten; and scarcely out of childhood, he left this soil watered by his tears to go to Italy. He presented his first work at Rome, his second at Geneva, his third at Paris, and lived more than half a century away from Liège without ever composing a note for his ungrateful homeland. But is Grétry the only illustrious man whose compatriots have disputed the honor of erecting his tomb after denying him shelter and bread during his lifetime?’

[C2-55 | source PDF 66–66]
I confess that the words attributed to Grétry seem to me scarcely consistent with everything he said of his country on various occasions. But is this speech really his, or are these words put into the mouth of his shade according to the rules of ancient personification? The latter seems more likely.

[C2-56 | source PDF 66–66]
Grétry, they say, was beaten at Liège! And by whom? By a bad chapel music master. Would it not be a singular kind of rancor to curse, for example, the nine hundred thousand inhabitants of Paris because a schoolmaster had mistreated you with his ferule? We hear of an ungrateful homeland and shelter refused. But on what occasion did Liège show ingratitude, and when did Grétry need shelter?

[C2-57 | source PDF 67–68]
Far from displaying this sort of animosity toward his country, or believing himself entitled to address such grave reproaches to it, Grétry never ceased to cherish the kindest memories of his birthplace. If he left Liège as he emerged from childhood, it was not as a land of sorrow but as the scene of his first successes, warmly applauded by his compatriots. The picture of his farewell, described in his memoirs, is deeply touching. I myself saw him enthusiastically welcomed on a visit to Liège, celebrated to the sound of his own music, which must have been the most moving and delicate tribute to him. When, on his arrival, the deeply touching air ‘Where can one be happier than among one’s family?’ was played, his emotion showed clearly that he found brothers in the people of Liège.[C2-N5] ‘It is very sweet to me,’ he says in a note to his memoirs, ‘though I have been far from my country since early childhood, to prove that I have not ceased to be its citizen.’ Finally, what more indisputable token of attachment could he give than to bequeath his heart to it? In life it had constantly beaten for his country; in death, he wished it to rest patriotically within her walls.

[C2-58 | source PDF 68–68]
I am happy to have taken a natural opportunity to defend my country against the disgraceful accusations directed at it, as every good citizen ought to do. To give it a measure of redress, I shall not omit the portrait of the people of Liège sketched by this same Grétry. The chapter could not end more fittingly:

[C2-59 | source PDF 68–69]
‘The character of the people of Liège,’ he says, ‘is of one piece. The man of Liège loves truth, and is unshakable, obstinate, when he believes he is following it. But he becomes tractable when his errors are gently shown to him. Aided by a strong imagination, he is not discouraged by the most persistent labor. A good father, a good husband, a good son, a good soldier: he has received all these gifts from nature. One finds the man of Liège in the armies of every power; but he will soon desert if he is not acknowledged as the best soldier in his regiment. His head is easily fired for good, sometimes for evil; sometimes foolish in the extreme, it seems that mediocrity alone has been denied him.’

Original notes

[C2-N1 | source PDF 39–39]
The blacksmith just mentioned was called Halloz Pleineval, according to a later writer, and the word houille is said to have come from this name, Halloz.

[C2-N2 | source PDF 49–49]
On February 28, 1812, water invaded the Triquenate shaft. The workmen rushed toward the basket to be raised. The master workman, Hubert Goffin, held back his son, resolved to leave only after everyone else. Soon the passages were cut off, and they took refuge in the ascending workings. These unfortunate men, eighty in number, without food or lights and forced by the low passages into painful bodily positions, wandered for five days within the earth, buried five hundred feet deep. Goffin’s courage, composure and sublime devotion rescued them a hundred times from despair. At last, on the fifth day, through good fortune so unhoped for that it might be seen as an act of Providence, the hammer blows of the men trying to cut their way out were heard from a neighboring shaft, and seventy were restored to light and life. The imperial government awarded Goffin a pension and the decoration of the Legion of Honor; the Institut made his devotion the subject of a prize competition. In 1814 the king of the Netherlands decorated him with the Order of the Belgian Lion. This brave man of Liège died on July 8, 1821, struck on the head by a fragment of stone hurled by an explosion in the colliery whose workings he directed. None of the men saved by his intrepidity died before him. He left ten children.

[C2-N3 | source PDF 60–60]
William III, king of England, eagerly sought several of Lairesse’s works and summoned him to The Hague. Yet several years passed without the prince paying the painter for all the work he had commissioned. Tired of these delays, Lairesse’s wife one day placed herself in the king’s path and presented her petition. ‘What!’ said the prince. ‘This is the wife of my Apelles? Ah, I am too well pleased with him for him not to be pleased with me.’ He thereupon had her given a sum greater than the amount owed to her husband.

[C2-N4 | source PDF 65–65]
Queen Marie Antoinette had graciously stood godmother to one of Grétry’s daughters.

[C2-N5 | source PDF 67–67]
The Society of Emulation of Liège arranged Grétry’s reception. The operas he loved best were performed at the theater, and he was publicly crowned.

Editorial record

The synopsis promises the Revolution of 1830, but this chapter in the recovered edition ends on printed p. 51 with the Grétry quotation. Preserve the synopsis and body as printed; do not invent a missing section.

Printed p. 31 calls the miner Coffin in the body and Goffin in the author note. Preserve that discrepancy; the note contains further historical assertions that have not been silently corrected.

The note on printed p. 23 reads Halloz Pleineval. This was read from the scan, replacing the draft’s erroneous Plenevaux.

Preserve 1775 for Flamaël’s death as printed on p. 44, and Flemaël/Flamaël variation. This is a source assertion, not an independently verified date.

The coal-priority claim, fire-damp account, child labor description and scientific assertions are translated as historical testimony, not modern technical advice.

Historical feet, leagues, sols, sous and francs are unconverted. A line in the pump passage is a historical small length unit; explain in the eventual units note.

Retain burre, hernaz and botteresses with contextual English explanation. The source describes colors in the mine plate; the recovered printed plate is monochrome.

Chapter III

Chest complaints at Liège. The delightful gardens of Renvoy. Our Lady of Liesse and others. Shifting ground. Entry into France. Ermenonville. An Englishman lost and found.

[C3-01 | source PDF 70–70]
An atmosphere continually laden with the acrid dust stirred into the air by the handling of coal, and with the light ash spread everywhere by its burning, must necessarily attack the lungs and cause diseases of the chest. Such illnesses are accordingly very frequent at Liège. They are also observed in great numbers in England, and it would not be useless to examine whether they are becoming more common in France as coal consumption increases. Sulfur has been recommended for these complaints. A physician of Liège, Dr. Demestre, generally prescribed it in vapor form, and generally cured his patients by death.

[C3-02 | source PDF 70–71]
Was it these particles of coal, or, as the doctors maintained, the electrical atmosphere from which I never emerged, that attacked my constitution? I have no idea. But I was frighteningly thin; no one would have dared predict that I would live a year beyond twenty-five. Movement and riding were prescribed as my only remedies. A horse had therefore been bought for me some time before, and on this mount I set off alone for Paris, looking, in my emaciated condition, rather like the knight Don Quixote, except that my steed was worth at least twelve Rocinantes. Judge for yourself: on my arrival I sold him for ten pistoles.

[C3-03 | source PDF 71–73]
I took the road toward Givet. Since, after traveling on foot, no method offers more freedom than going on horseback, I allowed myself time to visit places worth seeing. Nowhere have I read a description of the gardens of Renvoy,[C3-N1] and I owe a tribute to the keen pleasure their wonders gave me. I was traveling in the season that beautifies everything beneath the sky. Could I have chosen days that showed nature in a more smiling aspect? Nowhere, I believe, and especially in northern Europe, has she done so much to favor human ingenuity and make man’s dwelling pleasant as in these enchanted places. I cannot describe the multitude of paths offering the deepest shade, bordered by groves and further refreshed by countless fountains. Follow one of these paths and you come upon a rustic theater where you may dream, perhaps with a stronger illusion than at the Théâtre-Français, of seeing Racine’s tender and moving scenes performed. Instead, follow this stream through the thick grass and soon an imposing rock appears before you, from which three clamorous springs emerge and join in a magnificent cascade. After admiring several great pools, I climbed the slope leading to the upper part of the garden. Reaching a height almost sheer on the opposite side, I was astonished to see a canal of surprising length, enclosed, as it were, within its high banks. It was formed by a little river which, after spreading coolness in many places under various transformations, served every purpose of an ironworks and finally the domestic needs of a charming house. A peculiar sensation came from the sudden sight of a precipice at whose edge the river seemed suspended. You discovered it with alarm when the boatman, without warning, drove his gondola swiftly toward the bank, which it seemed about to strike and break through. You thought yourself hurled into the depths, but a swift, skillful turn left only the pleasant impression of a sharp surprise and an imaginary danger from which you believed you had escaped. I embarked in an elegant gondola. It carried me into the depths of a wood, part of which I explored by crossing bridges built of tree branches. Several picturesque views passed before me, and then I was led into a series of moss-lined grottoes.

[C3-04 | source PDF 73–74]
In the furthest part of the wood I saw an ancient hermitage, built only a few years before but seeming to bear the weight of centuries. Beside his bed, the hermit was reading his book of hours; he greeted us three times with great solemnity. Those accompanying us feigned surprise well enough, and once more we amused ourselves with this ingenious automaton. We were then invited to visit the silent personage’s dirty-linen room. A door opened, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a little drawing room very prettily painted by the owner himself, M. de Montpellier. After reembarking, we saw a fountain rising above a rustic cascade; further on, in the darkness of a grove, several pools poured beautiful sheets of water from one to the next, crowned by a brilliant spray. Art, in these delightful gardens, seemed to have taken every care to conceal itself and allow its triumph to be credited to nature. Fresh and cheerful images born of this walk accompanied me as far as the French frontier, where a prospect of a very different kind changed the course of my thoughts.

[C3-05 | source PDF 74–75]
The Prussians had just been driven from Lille and Valenciennes, which they had almost reduced to ashes. One still walked over smoking ruins. Everywhere the joy of deliverance mingled with the sense of suffering endured; each person displayed his wounds, so to speak. Here enemy cannonballs had struck; there a French one. The latter, at least, despite its destruction, was a messenger of triumph. Patriotism revived men’s spirits, and the foreigner who brought to this beautiful country of France only the old ideas of pleasure and frivolity found himself astonished by feelings of enthusiasm and civic devotion which it became almost impossible to resist. The national cockade of three colors adorned every hat, and I decorated mine with this livery of liberty, which had then replaced all others and which it is always so glorious to wear.

[C3-06 | source PDF 75–76]
It was doubtless a great misfortune that the priests had not been charged with defending these two cities against the enemy. Where cannon failed, they would have brought a more effective protection into play. This thought occurred to me while visiting the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Liesse, where a famous image of that Virgin is kept. At Padua, in Italy, one is shown the cannonballs which, during a siege of the city, fell at the Virgin’s feet and were stopped by her outstretched hand. A no less astonishing wonder once occurred at the siege of Louvain. The besieged had no weapons left; they invoked the Virgin, who at once appeared in the air amid the smoke, holding her son in her arms, and revealed to the suppliants great stores of gunpowder which they successfully fired against the enemy. A painting preserved in one of Louvain’s churches attests the authenticity of this miracle. Apparently the unbelievers of Lille and Valenciennes entertained no such pious thoughts, for Our Lady of Liesse would surely have been no less compassionate than Our Ladies of Padua and Louvain. Be that as it may, she can dispense with this martial prodigy: her fame extends far enough. Numerous offerings have enriched her church, to which an immense gallery is attached, lined as usual with every sort of little narrative picture or votive offering. The priests of this shrine claim that within a radius of fifty leagues the physician’s art is superfluous. Our Lady of Liesse cures every kind of physical and moral ill, even jealousy and infidelity.

[C3-07 | source PDF 76–77]
As everyone knows, Our Ladies have performed miracles in most of Europe’s villages.[C3-N2] On the island of Corcyra, a painting of this kind had made a little church famous. Foreigners curious to learn whether their friends were dead or alive approached the image and pressed a coin against it while thinking of one of their friends. If the person in question was alive, the coin stuck to the image; if dead, it fell into a bag placed below. Thus, whether the person was dead or alive, the priest was sure of getting the coin. A little attention soon revealed that all the coins stuck to one and the same spot, while those applied elsewhere fell to the ground. The image is painted on the wall and is very shiny. One can guess how carefully the priest keeps it supplied with varnish.

[C3-08 | source PDF 77–79]
We had not long left Notre-Dame-de-Liesse when our lack of faith received its punishment. You will remember the sands of Hammon, in which the army of a sacrilegious prince was buried. A less tragic adventure, though it might have become one, likewise taught us how the nature of a place could sometimes serve the trickery of priests. We were trotting along cheerfully enough in the middle of a causeway, with meadows of the loveliest green to right and left. The sight of this grass tempted my traveling companion,[C3-N3] who urged his horse across the field. He had scarcely gone twenty paces when his mount suddenly sank into the earth up to its belly and remained motionless, leaving the rider all at once both on foot and on horseback. All my efforts to get the horse out of this predicament were useless. We had to resort to means known locally. With the help of a sling it was soon lifted, and a bridge of planks was laid for it to reach the causeway. Apparently an immense lake lies beneath this place, covered by a layer of vegetable soil and presenting, as I have said, the appearance of a green meadow. A person walking on this shifting floor made the ground shake a great distance away. In this neighborhood, toward the end of the dog days, a village practitioner of physics used to deceive the inhabitants by inviting them to come at dusk and see the spirit of this or that dead person. The countryman arrived full of faith. He was instructed to drive his stick into the ground, set his lantern beside it, and say a short prayer. After his paternoster, he devoutly picked up the lantern and stick. The gas rising through the hole made by the stick immediately caught fire, and to the good peasant the apparition seemed complete. What benefits might follow if even the simplest scientific knowledge were spread through the countryside!

[C3-09 | source PDF 79–80]
We continued swiftly on our way to Senlis. I would not enter Paris without seeing Ermenonville, which lay so near. What a difference between this vast garden and the one at Renvoy! The latter seems intended as the dwelling of nymphs or some benevolent fairy; the former, silent, wild, and abandoned to nature for a century, seems a temple of the Druids. I spent four days visiting its different parts, and throughout that time could not resist a profound melancholy, shared, I believe at least, by everyone there at the same time. A sacred silence, prodigious vegetation, buildings dedicated to philosophy, huts, a solitary tomb, that island of poplars, inscriptions and verses suited to the solitude: all surrender you to those deep emotions of nature so eloquently described by the great man whose memory is recalled at every step. Under so powerful a spell, I saw and touched the clothes of the author of Émile. The sword of Charlemagne, which I have seen since, certainly made less impression on me than Jean-Jacques’s wooden shoes.[C3-N4]

[C3-10 | source PDF 80–80]
I shall certainly not describe the gardens of Ermenonville, described so often elsewhere. Here are only a few names and verses which I noted down and which do not appear in the entry on Ermenonville in the Guide to the Environs of Paris. The following lines were to be read on the rustic house:

[C3-11 | source PDF 80–80]
‘His Royal Highness Ferdinand C. Antoine of Austria, brother of the Emperor, and Marie Béatrix d’Est, hereditary princess of Modena, his wife, dined in this house on Monday, May 10, 1786.’

[C3-12 | source PDF 80–80]
‘Gustav III, king of Sweden, dined in this house on Tuesday, July 2, 1784.’

[C3-13 | source PDF 80–80]
‘Emperor Joseph II dined in this house on May 24, 1777.’

[C3-14 | source PDF 81–81]
In the same place one could also read this piece of verse:

[C3-15 | source PDF 81–81]
To prefer a simple cottage to palaces,
To lay aside the pomp and grandeur of kings,
To honor the candor of one’s delighted hosts,
To keep among them our original equality:
This a prince has done; and perhaps you think
He must be numbered with the heroes of fable,
Had we not named Joseph the Second,
Both father and master of the fortunate Germans.

[C3-16 | source PDF 81–81]
Elsewhere is this:

[C3-17 | source PDF 81–81]
Vanish, magnificent places,
Where everything falls victim to art,
Where sand in place of grass
Everywhere saddens the eye.
Here kindly nature,
In her gentle simplicity,
Offers the moving picture
Of a tranquil freedom.

[C3-18 | source PDF 81–81]
In the enclosure Jean-Jacques had chosen for his dwelling, this had been written:

[C3-19 | source PDF 81–81]
Good Jean-Jacques would come
To these benches to contemplate the greenery,
To feed his birds
And play with our children.

[C3-20 | source PDF 81–81]
And on the island of poplars:

[C3-21 | source PDF 81–81]
Would you pay homage to tender-hearted Rousseau?
Swear upon his tomb to make others happy.
Offer his ashes no sumptuous incense;
A single virtue would please him more.

[C3-22 | source PDF 81–82]
On each of the six columns of the Temple of Modern Philosophy are the names of the architects who began its construction:

J. J. Rousseau — Naturam.
Montesquieu — Justitiam.
W. Pein — Humanitatem.
Voltaire — Ridiculum.
Descartes — Nil in rebus inane.
Newton — Lucem.

[C3-23 | source PDF 82–82]
On the base of a broken column are these words: Quis hoc perficiet? ‘Who will complete it?’ Someone had written Buffon by hand. But I would designate this writer’s place as follows:

Buffon. Majestatem.

[C3-24 | source PDF 82–83]
During our stay at Ermenonville a storm arose toward evening, and everyone hurried to find shelter. We all returned to the inn, but at supper we searched in vain among us for one missing companion. An Englishman, lost in his reveries, had strayed from the path. Despairing of finding the right way, he had quickly made up his mind: we spotted him perched in a tree, apparently prepared to spend the night in that aerial seat. The torches we all carried seemed to frighten him. We urged him to come down and offered to guide him, but without abandoning his post he resisted all our appeals and almost stood on the defensive. To gain his confidence, we had to fetch his servant. At the sight of the groom he needed no further coaxing, and we brought him back to the inn, though not before fearing some demonstration of boxing from across the Channel, so displeased did he seem at being disturbed in that agreeable position.

[C3-25 | source PDF 83–83]
Leaving Ermenonville, we came to spend the night at Le Bourget. The next day, August 21, we entered Paris.

Original notes

[C3-N1 | source PDF 71–71]
Renvoy, in Belgium, not far from Namur.

[C3-N2 | source PDF 76–76]
I believe I have noticed, and the observation may be applied to the little district of Notre-Dame-de-Liesse, that devotions of this kind were ordinarily established to sustain places to which neither trade nor the soil offered resources. Notre-Dame-de-Liesse is precisely such a case.

[C3-N3 | source PDF 77–77]
M. Képenne, a native of Liège and a fellow student of mine.

[C3-N4 | source PDF 80–80]
These wooden shoes were lined with sheepskin, shorn very close, for the pious visitors pulled out the wool to keep it. “They have worn out twenty sheepskins for me since I took this post,” the caretaker told me. It would be curious to know how many curtains and blankets have likewise been consumed in Voltaire’s room at Ferney over the more than half a century during which travelers from both worlds have carried away scraps.

Editorial record

Renvoy and W. Pein are retained as printed. Képenne was verified against the scan of printed p. 59.

The dates and weekdays in the Ermenonville inscriptions are reproduced as printed, without silent calendrical correction.

Six two-column name/motto pairs on printed p. 64 were restored from the page image; raw OCR lists names and mottos separately. Latin is retained; a later editorial gloss may explain the mottos.

Preserve the source’s narrative chronology and military claims without assigning an unprinted year to the August 21 arrival.

Verse is rendered as unrhymed English preserving meaning and line grouping. No claim of metrical equivalence.

The Latin mottos mean: nature; justice; humanity; ridicule; nothing in things is empty; light. Buffon’s motto is majesty. The names and motto pairings follow the printed table.

Chapter IV

The face of Paris. The revolution in hair powder. Mademoiselle Dervieux and the Comte d’A*****. Lucienne and Dubarry. Pascal Tasquin. Little cameos. M. Brisson’s physics course. An example of innocence. Minister Bénézech. The celebrated M. Charles.

[C4-01 | source PDF 84–84]
Mercier, the author of the Tableau de Paris, once told me that a friend of his, returning after a long absence, was sitting on the boulevard the day after his arrival. It seemed to him that these workmen of every kind, especially the masons, these hackney coaches, cabriolets and private carriages, all this bustling world, these strollers, the faces of passersby, the regulars of public places, the general manner of it all, were the same as he thought he had seen less than a week before. Yet this observer had been away from Paris for thirty years.

[C4-02 | source PDF 84–85]
It is true that Paris is unfamiliar only once to those not born there. Once you have known it and lived there for a few months, you never forget it, so distinctive, lively and animated is its face, so deeply does it impress itself upon the imagination. People do not walk or stroll there as elsewhere, nor do they go about their business as in other populous cities. The simplest things, which seem capable of being done in only one way, are nevertheless done differently there. All this forms a whole of delicate shades, a sort of movement, a kind of activity so particular that, once you have accommodated yourself to it, you carry its image everywhere. I have experienced this upon returning from my many travels. After several years’ absence, a single week seems to contain the whole time elapsed since your departure. Even a blind man who had long been away would feel at home in this capital again after a few days. How could he mistake that noise, that continual din, at once uniform and varied; that pitch of voices; those hereditary cries passed from father to son, which form part, so to speak, of the stock-in-trade of the wandering water carrier, clothes seller, glazier, vegetable seller and so many other branches of humble industry?

[C4-03 | source PDF 85–86]
I do not mean to apply this observation to the city’s physical appearance. The number of buildings, the straightening and widening of streets, new routes of communication, the marble and bronze monuments raised in so many places, the progress of every art, and the new riches they have accumulated in shops whose luxury grows more dazzling every day: all this greatly changes the appearance of a city. But I say that one always recognizes the same people. The émigrés, for example, to borrow a familiar saying, left them in a Paris of brick and found them again in a Paris of marble.

[C4-04 | source PDF 86–86]
One great change has nevertheless occurred in the appearance of the inhabitants compared with the Parisians I saw forty years ago. Perhaps it was the only change capable of making this people so unlike itself. I mean the revolution in hair powder. One can easily imagine the contrast between an entire population of white heads and a population of dark ones! Picture for a moment the crowd of dandies thronging the boulevard des Italiens, all powdered white, with their braided side locks and tied queues, and you will understand the immense distance that the Titus haircut has placed forever between 1789 and 1830.

[C4-05 | source PDF 86–88]
My first desire and my first concern on arriving were to see everything shown to foreigners and to visit everything worth seeing within Paris and around it. I still remember the interior of a charming house which a great personage[C4-N1] had built in the rue Chantereine for an actress at the Opéra, Mademoiselle Dervieux. The most elegant arrangement of rooms; paintings on every panel, full of grace and lightness in execution, gallantry in subject and charm in detail; varied European and Asian furnishings in which luxury had been guided by taste: all drew great swarms of connoisseurs to this dwelling of pleasure. From a Turkish room where everything recalled a sultan’s delights, you passed into a boudoir whose smallest ornaments were Chinese, no doubt as a continual allusion to the little feet of the pretty dancer who ruled this palace. A little later I lodged beside this house, whose construction, it was said, contained not a single piece of iron because Mademoiselle Dervieux feared thunder. My window overlooked its courtyard. The richest carriages followed one another there without cease, and the mistress of the house received assiduous homage. I came to know this Mademoiselle Dervieux later, when she became the wife of an artist made famous by a fine monument.[C4-N2] I cannot say whether she is still alive. I met her about a year ago, suffering, supported by a crutch... Gods! How much thread the Fates had spun! How brilliant and pretty she had been forty years before!

[C4-06 | source PDF 88–89]
What is curious in her husband’s case is that, during the Revolution, the painter Degoty arrived at his house bearing letters of recommendation from Mademoiselle Dervieux’s lover. Degoty even assured me that he had come to France only because of the prince’s encouragement and the certainty that these letters would obtain him protection of some consequence. But times had changed, and the letters were received all the less favorably because correspondence from abroad then caused particular fear of being compromised. Twenty years later, the reverse occurred. The artist, more good-natured than sensitive as a husband, wished to have his wife presented to the great personage whose recommendation during exile had proved so ineffective. His wife was not received, and the request met with an answer more or less equivalent to these words: other times, other manners.

[C4-07 | source PDF 89–90]
At the same time I visited Lucienne, that beautiful domain of the Comtesse Dubarry. It was a passage from spring to autumn, from the luxury of a prince in love to that of a king. The countess was dining that day beneath a fine pavilion in the gardens, but I had nevertheless been allowed to walk through them. Servants came one after another carrying gold and silver dishes and everything that indicated a sumptuous service. I was dazzled by so much magnificence. This prodigality of wealth made me think of the sufferings of the lower classes, among whom there were then so many unfortunate people. I did not foresee that luxury so scandalously acquired would soon be paid for so dearly. I had only glimpsed Madame Dubarry. I saw her once more a few years later. One day, as I crossed the square of the Palais-Royal, a cart traveling along the rue Saint-Honoré toward the place Louis XV passed before me. A woman on the cart was uttering heartrending cries. The crowd escorting her showed none of the signs of compassion that a woman’s despair wrings from the hardest hearts. The people were silent; only a few men from the rabble answered her cries and groans with names reserved for prostitutes. I need not add that this woman was Dubarry and that she was being taken to the scaffold.

[C4-08 | source PDF 90–91]
When I came to Paris, these bloody scenes were still far off. Louis XVI’s throne still stood and retained its splendor. To find employment, I was counting on a letter of recommendation which I brought to M. Pascal Tasquin, the king’s harpsichord maker and a native of Liège. M. Pascal welcomed me kindly and gave me very wise advice which a peculiar habit fixed in my memory. This man, highly skilled and renowned in his profession, carried all the technical terms of his art into his everyday conversation. Morality, dressed in all these words, might have passed, before a listener unfamiliar with the subject, for one of the instruments he made. ‘Life is a keyboard,’ he told me, ‘on which one must play in tune and strike the right keys. Some people run through every scale of fortune and are no happier for it; others find happiness in the second octave. Do not be frightened by a false note when you have a good ear. With courage, good conduct and talent, a perfect chord is not difficult. Beware of bad company: it breaks the harmony of good intentions, and there can be no unison between scoundrels and honest people.’ The same expressions returned to his lips on every other subject. He promised to concern himself with me, and we shall see that no dissonance arose between promise and performance.

[C4-09 | source PDF 91–91]
Meanwhile I began painting little cameos for a dealer in the Palais-Royal who paid me very well. I had the glory of seeing one of my subjects framed in a border of diamonds on a very beautiful box. I sometimes still happen to look through his shop windows at that honest M. Cabasson, a bachelor comfortably endowed with flesh. What a distance I have traveled while he has remained in the same place! But time has spared him no more than me, and in truth time works strange transformations.

[C4-10 | source PDF 91–93]
Before long I also devoted myself, almost exclusively, to my favorite passion, experimental physics. The celebrated Charles then attracted large audiences, and I ardently wished to attend his course. I presented myself at his house. How painful it was to find myself unable to take from my little purse the four louis that the course cost! I did not give up hope of managing it. I took courage, and although I lived at the far end of the Chaussée-d’Antin, every morning I faithfully attended the lectures of M. Brisson, who taught at the Collège de France. Good M. Brisson did not shine in eloquence or in the refinement of his expressions. No one could teach more simply or with greater good nature. His lectures were loved because he made himself understood through explanations within everyone’s reach, though usually far from elevated. One day, for example, he was speaking about combined motions and cited the illusion of a person who, jumping from a moving carriage, does not land where he expected. ‘Thus,’ he added, ‘a person seated in the front of a hackney coach chooses a suitable moment, looks carefully to see that no one is in front of him, spits through the doorway, and strikes an unfortunate passerby coming in the opposite direction squarely in the face.’ Examples of this kind made us laugh, and theory remained in our minds, supported by practice.

[C4-11 | source PDF 93–94]
Entirely occupied with the study of physics, mechanics and chemistry, I pursued them all the more eagerly because no dissipation distracted me. Gifted with a keen and immediate sense of what constitutes beauty in women, I did not deny myself the pleasure of sometimes contemplating very beautiful faces above the shoulders of the nymphs of the Palais-Royal. But this contemplation had no result beyond leading me to pity them. One’s soul is so pure and one’s heart so innocent at twenty! I might almost have seriously undertaken their conversion. The idea is not so strange, after all. I imagine that few young men, at least among those brought up outside Paris, have not innocently tried to give these poor creatures a little advice. I went further: my simplicity did not stop at advice. A very pretty young girl came and familiarly took my arm. I told her at once how beautiful I found her and how regrettable it seemed that she should prostitute such charms. Had she no family that would receive her indulgently if she returned? The girl, on whose lips a mocking smile had begun to play, understood whom she was dealing with. Putting on a modest and contrite air, she told me she sometimes thought of returning to virtue; she had not been happy with her family, but if she could obtain money for the journey, she would go back. I urged her to take this course. ‘Well then,’ she said slyly, ‘will you give me the money to take the stagecoach?’ I hesitated; I was not rich. At last the desire to do a good deed prevailed. I had not brought myself to give four louis for M. Charles’s course; I sacrificed one out of pure love of virtue. This is one of those acts at which one later laughs heartily, but which at the time give one the consciousness of a noble triumph! I need hardly add that the clever Norman girl, for I think she was one, may still be getting ready to leave.

[C4-12 | source PDF 94–96]
It will be seen that, at least in one essential respect, my disposition was very suitable for a young man wishing to undertake a private pupil’s education. M. Pascal Tasquin had tried in several keys to be useful to me. ‘Never mind,’ he would say. ‘If we do not succeed in the G clef, we shall try the C clef.’ I do not know exactly which clef favored me, but he informed me that the overture had been arranged and that I had only to sit down at the harpsichord. With the help of a commentary, I learned that he had obtained for me the post of tutor to the son of M. Bénézech, who later became minister of the interior under the Directory and sailed with General Leclerc’s expedition to Saint-Domingue, where he died. M. Bénézech had married the Baronne de Boyle, who brought him ownership of the Petites-Affiches, founded, I believe, by a member of her family. This property was said to produce two hundred thousand francs a year. One of M. Bénézech’s brothers,[C4-N3] who was very learned in mathematics, took pleasure in teaching me the subject. Much kindness and consideration, eighteen hundred francs in salary, an excellent table, very pretty lodgings, and the use of a carriage whenever I wished made the post delightful. Particular circumstances prevented me from keeping it for more than a year, but I left with the keenest regret. Mirabeau sometimes dined in this house. I remember hearing it said there, for I often returned, that as he lay dying he told someone supporting his head: ‘Pray God to preserve it; it contains the salvation of France.’

[C4-13 | source PDF 96–96]
I had made useful acquaintances at M. de Bénézech’s, among them M. Ferrière de Sauvebœuf, author of Travels in Turkey and Persia. Through him I was entrusted with the education of the son of Madame Chevalier, wife of the last French governor in India. Her husband must have amassed a colossal fortune there, since the English took twenty ships and several millions belonging to him. The stormy days of the Revolution arrived while I was still in this lady’s household. Before giving some details of those difficult times, I wish to return for a moment to M. Charles.

[C4-14 | source PDF 96–97]
I had enrolled among the pupils of this celebrated professor, and his course, which I followed with particular ardor, continually stimulated and strengthened my decided taste for the wonders of physics. M. Charles knew how to make a profound impression on his audience. He achieved it not only through the beauty, combination and skillful preparation of his experiments, always crowned with success, but also through personal qualities. His tall stature, good proportions and handsome face commanded attention from the first. Always careful in his dress, he set off these natural advantages with simple, elegant informality. A large black fur cap and a loose, padded gown of green silk, fastened with a belt, made up his costume in the style of Franklin. At least, that is roughly how I saw that good man, and at the same time that great man, of the United States dressed. M. Charles also possessed eloquence as brilliant as it was fluent, and a voice at once flexible and resonant. In short, he enjoyed all the advantages that should be united in anyone destined to draw the gaze of an audience. Lack of grace, youth and personal charm is a serious disadvantage before the public. The man without these gifts has two victories to win instead of one: he must obtain indulgence for his person and justice for his talent. By contrast, the man favored with an agreeable appearance has already secured part of the second triumph through the first. Thus, in his most astonishing experiments, M. Charles seemed to compel nature’s obedience less in the name of science than by his own authority.

[C4-15 | source PDF 98–98]
After the portrait I have just given, no one will be surprised that many women joined his most regular listeners. His sessions offered pleasure to the eye and the mind alike. I could draw no more faithful picture of his experiments than this:

[C4-16 | source PDF 98–98]
‘M. Charles did not confine himself to modest difficulties. He strove to arouse attention by the magnitude and intensity of his results. In his microscopic experiments he produced enormous magnification. If he studied radiant heat, he showed its effects at very great distances. In his lessons on electricity, he struck an animal with lightning.

[C4-17 | source PDF 98–98]
‘As soon as a storm announced itself, Charles could be seen directing his electrical apparatus toward the sky. From the clouds he drew down thousands of tremendous sparks more than twelve feet long, which burst with a noise like a firearm. In his hands everything became a spectacle and, so to speak, an event which none of its witnesses could ever forget. It was in this way that he contributed so successfully to spreading a taste for, and the study of, natural philosophy.’

[C4-18 | source PDF 98–100]
These are the words of M. Fournier, of the Academy of Sciences and the Académie Française. He describes very happily what Charles’s listeners were able to see for thirty years. This physicist, with whom I later became closely acquainted, often told me, and even repeated several times in public, an anecdote already printed but curious enough, and still little known enough, for me to reproduce it without scruple. Marat came one day to his apartment to set out views contrary to those expressed by Newton in his works on optics and to raise some objections concerning certain electrical phenomena. M. Charles, sharing none of his opinions, undertook to demonstrate his errors. Marat met reason with rage. Each new and irresistible argument increased his irritation. Suddenly his anger burst all bounds. He drew the small sword he always carried and rushed at his adversary, who, unarmed, defended himself by dexterity. Thanks to muscular strength far superior to his enemy’s, Charles threw him down, seized his sword and broke it on the spot. Whether from the shame of being twice defeated or, more likely, from the violence that had driven him to such excesses, Marat lost consciousness. M. Charles immediately called for help, had Marat carried home, and secured witnesses to the event. No judicial inquiry resulted from this extraordinary affair.

[C4-19 | source PDF 100–100]
Everyone knows, and all Europe knows, that we owe to M. Charles the use of hydrogen gas in place of expansion by heat to inflate balloons. Although this new method has led to the almost general abandonment of the other, some people used the latter recently enough for me to think it useful, in 1824, to publish a letter in Spanish, since I was then in Madrid, against the dangers of Montgolfier balloons. I do not wish to anticipate my subject by inserting reflections on aerostats here. I shall merely say that the glory of M. Charles’s fine invention can be equaled only by the discovery of a gas lighter than hydrogen, a discovery to which I firmly believe the means of steering balloons is linked.

[C4-20 | source PDF 100–102]
I have always been surprised, and am astonished that no one has remarked upon it, that M. Charles rose into the air only once. How did the desire to make his gift fruitful, the hope of tracing routes through the sky for those globes to which he had opened a safer course and allowed a longer stay among the stars, not draw him a hundred times into the clouds? It is true that during his only aerial voyage he set down his companion at a first landing, then rose again alone to a very great height. But shall I confess it? I believe one may say of Charles what a great captain maintained should be said of most soldiers: ‘He was brave that day.’ Indeed, M. Charles never seemed to me to contemplate a balloon departure without some alarm. He often repeated these significant words to me in relation to my numerous ascents: ‘How can a man risk his life so many times!’ Perhaps his fine talent brought him enough glory down here to spare him the search for a more perilous kind too far above the ground. I must also confess that he did not believe balloons could be steered. In general, M. Charles, so ingenious in combining the beautiful effects of experimental physics and revealing its most unexpected resources in so marvelous a way, seemed to me too inclined to limit the power of human genius, or at least to doubt its further progress. This distrust always seemed likely to bring a fatal discouragement to inventors. I believed, on the contrary, that they ought constantly to keep in mind Horace’s nil mortalibus arduum, and these words of Buffon: ‘Men need an imaginary goal. If they were persuaded that they would in fact do only what they can do, they would do nothing at all.’ M. Charles, I believe, left nothing in print on physics.

Original notes

[C4-N1 | source PDF 87–87]
The Comte d’A*****.

[C4-N2 | source PDF 88–88]
The dome of the Halle-au-Blé.

[C4-N3 | source PDF 95–95]
M. Bénézech-Saint-Honoré.

Editorial record

Retain the masked Comte d’A***** and the source forms Lucienne, Pascal Tasquin and Fournier. Do not silently supply identities or modernize proper names.

Source chronology is retained: Chapter III describes military damage before entry into Paris, while Chapter IV says the first arrival preceded the bloody revolutionary scenes. A final chronology note should distinguish the author’s narration from verified chronology.

The claim of a possible gas lighter than hydrogen and the anecdote about Marat are source claims, not endorsed scientific or historical conclusions.

Preserve the musical puns in Pascal’s advice: keyboard, scale, octave, chord, harmony, unison, dissonance, clef and overture.

Horace’s nil mortalibus arduum means “nothing is too difficult for mortals.”

Chapter V

The execution of Marie-Antoinette. Monsieur Delaporte, administrator of the Civil List. The notary Prédicant. Balls at the Hôtel Richelieu. An involuntary Titus cut. The two Italians. The valet. Madame Chevalier’s arrest. Monsieur de Sallabéry’s arrest prevented. Messieurs de Mortagne and de La Tremblay. The sham robbers. Return to Liège. Monsieur Villette’s burning mirror.

[C5-01 | source PDF 103–103]
I count the days I spent at Madame Chevalier’s among the happiest of my life. My pupil was exceptionally gifted, and his progress gave me the sweetest satisfaction. His mother’s house offered every kind of pleasure besides. Among those I valued most, I place first the company of a large and brilliant circle, where wit and learning lent endless charm to society. But that circle was soon to scatter. The storms of the Revolution had long been rumbling; at last they broke with a violence heightened by many outside causes. Some members of the royal family managed to cross the frontier; the unfortunate Louis XVI perished, and the queen, his unhappy wife, soon followed him.

[C5-02 | source PDF 104–105]
Madame Chevalier had been presented at court and remained deeply attached to the queen. The thought of that princess’s condemnation never left her. She wished to see her one last time, and on the day the fatal sentence was carried out, she asked me to take her to the route along which the queen would pass. We got into a hackney coach. She was trembling all over, her face visibly changed. The carriage stopped in the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, behind the crowd. The queen’s approach suddenly revived Madame Chevalier, and with my help she climbed onto the coachman’s seat. A quick glance showed her Marie-Antoinette, made more beautiful by a calm and composure that contrasted so cruelly and movingly with her fate and the dreadful conclusion of the spectacle in which she figured. Madame Chevalier could not bear the sight. A tear had just moistened her eyelid when she suddenly fainted. Imagine my predicament in so difficult a situation, in the awkward place where we were perched, facing a multitude whose attention, had it turned our way, might have proved fatal to us! Fortunately that attention was absorbed by the very thing that had caused such distress. With the coachman’s help I managed to get Madame Chevalier back into the carriage. Little by little she recovered consciousness, and I brought her home, cruelly affected by what she had seen. That scene has never left my imagination; it seems to me no further away than yesterday.

[C5-03 | source PDF 105–106]
In those days, marked by so much mourning and strewn with so many dangers, people hurried to leave the capital and seek refuge in country houses. We went to Conan, near Blois. This estate had been purchased with the remnants of Monsieur Chevalier’s fortune. Six hundred thousand francs had survived the wreck of his riches, that is to say, their capture by the English. Near Conan, Monsieur de Foucault owned a château where all the old nobility of the neighborhood gathered. They tried to avert suspicion and distract themselves from political misfortune with games and small festivities, especially amateur theatricals. Madame Delaporte was among those staying there. Her husband, the administrator of the Civil List, had been imprisoned, and I do not know on what pretext or for what reasons, doubtless represented as serving the prisoner’s interests, his wife had been persuaded to leave Paris. Whether she knew nothing of his imprisonment or felt no fear of its consequences, she joined in the bustle, even the gaiety, that prevailed in the château. One morning, however, every face seemed frozen. People approached one another mysteriously and spoke in whispers. They put on an open expression before Madame Delaporte, then followed her with compassionate eyes when she had passed. The reader may already have guessed the explanation. The newspapers had just arrived, and in them everyone had read with horror the account of Monsieur Delaporte’s execution in the place du Carrousel. A thunderbolt could not have produced a more sudden effect throughout the château. Everyone hastened to say farewell and depart, leaving the hosts the painful task of telling Madame Delaporte of her misfortune and offering her their sorrowful, useless consolations.

[C5-04 | source PDF 106–108]
It is scarcely possible to imagine how much the impression made by such calamities is heightened when you know, see, and stand close to the person who must bear so great a share of them! You can hardly persuade yourself that this person, with whom you are at that very moment sharing feelings and conversation, can be visited by such terrible suffering. Their misfortune turns your thoughts back upon yourself and causes a kind of terror, as though it might be contagious. I felt this again when, after talking at some length one morning with Monsieur Prédicant, Madame Chevalier’s notary, I learned that same evening that he had died on the scaffold. This swift execution of a sentence, allowing the condemned person no time even to collect himself, resign himself to his fate, put his affairs in order, or dictate advice to his family, cutting him off without warning or delay from society and existence, was perhaps the most frightening feature of the Revolution’s course. As for individual convictions, there were far fewer unjust ones than is generally supposed, if we consider them in relation to the application of the laws then in force. That those laws were criminal, I do not dispute; that nature, honor, and virtue often commanded their violation, no one can deny. All I mean to say is that they were violated. Thus Monsieur Prédicant was condemned, or so it was said at the time, for making a fictitious, backdated assignment of an émigré’s property to save it from confiscation. A conviction of this kind might therefore be regarded as a legal crime.

[C5-05 | source PDF 108–108]
In those disastrous times, who would believe it, pleasure had not been banished from the capital. Forgive me the rather forceful expression: people danced amid the scaffolds. It was during the Terror that the balls were held at the Hôtel Richelieu in the rue d’Antin. There the cream of the aristocracy gathered with the fashionable young men then called muscadins. Among the women who shone most brilliantly were Madame Récamier, Madame Tallien, Madame Amelin, whom everyone called Terpsichore, and Madame and Mademoiselle de Beauharnais. I was at one of these gatherings on the night the Committee of Public Safety had the house surrounded. A great many young men were trying to evade conscription, and the authorities had conceived the idea of gathering, in a single night, a plentiful harvest of young heroes in silk stockings. I do not know whether the catch was successful. For my part, I made a successful retreat by jumping over the garden walls.

[C5-06 | source PDF 108–109]
However careful I was then to give no grounds for suspicion, I had at first been unable to bring myself to sacrifice to the scissors the bunch of hair worn behind the head and known as a cadogan. Powder, too, continued to whiten the back and collar of my coat. This attachment to the old fashion did not go unpunished. Some citizenesses of the Section des Piques and the Marché des Innocents almost rose in revolt against me, pursuing me with cries of “muscadin” and “aristocrat.” It was doubtless fortunate that I fled instead of standing up to the storm. I told the story laughingly at dinner. They urged me in vain to yield to fashion, that is, adopt the Titus cut. They threatened me with scissors, showing me the two blades spread apart; I was attached to my queue, and held firmly to it. The contest was merely postponed. Sleep served the designs of the conspirators, Messieurs Chevalier, Peskoski, and company. They came and cropped me while I slept, and dawn revealed to my waking eyes, not the back of my head, but what had adorned it. I had no choice but to laugh. At least my hair, commoner though it was, had remained faithful to the old regime as long as that of any feudal head.

[C5-07 | source PDF 109–110]
Madame Chevalier’s fortune and the high offices her husband had held were bound sooner or later to bring about her arrest. She was warned in time and went into hiding at Luciennes. I visited her frequently, dressed in the patriotic carmagnole jacket. To avoid arousing suspicion by entering through the gate, I climbed over the garden walls and reported to her on both public affairs and her private business.

[C5-08 | source PDF 110–112]
I undertook a piece of that business which was not without danger. Madame Chevalier had asked me to sell her silver, which I kept carefully hidden, for a decree of the Convention, passed on Robespierre’s proposal, required everyone to bring all the gold and silver they possessed to the mint and receive paper in exchange. My Italian teacher recommended two of his countrymen with whom I might make a reasonable arrangement, since the jewelers and goldsmiths of Paris did not dare to buy. I have no doubt that enterprising foreigners who secretly engaged in this trade made considerable profits. We agreed to meet on the boulevard des Capucines. Madame Chevalier lived in the rue Caumartin. I loaded the basket of silver onto a porter’s carrying frame and went to the appointed place, where my Italians soon joined me. They led me along the boulevards to the boulevard Bonnes-Nouvelles. On the way, one of them drew a large knife, telling me that if we were attacked he had something to defend us with. I paid little attention to this excess of precaution. They turned into the rue Saint-Étienne, and in that deserted little street we climbed to the first floor of a sparsely occupied house. The basket of silver was set down in the anteroom, and I was immediately shown into the drawing room, where a good fire was burning. One of my guides came to talk to me while we waited for the equipment needed to weigh the silver. But the conversation did not prevent me from counting the minutes. I began to find them long, and calculated how much time ill-intentioned men would need to play me a nasty trick. Unable to contain my impatience any longer, I went to the door and flung it open. I could not have acted more opportunely! What did I find? My other Italian, dragging the basket of silver, fortunately a very heavy one, as quietly as possible toward the stairway door. To rush without hesitation to the basket, haul it back in a single pull into the middle of the drawing room, and demand why they wanted to take it away was the work of a second. “Why?” one of them answered. “To put it somewhere safe.” “Safe! What! Before weighing it, before paying for it! It is safe here, under my eyes. What, in short, do you intend?” “Ah, sir,” the other Italian replied, “you are uneasy. Your distrustful look tells us your suspicions. Well, no, we do not intend to rob you. But this silver no longer belongs to you; it is government property. We are going to denounce you to the Committee of Public Safety, and it will be all the worse for you because this basket contains coins struck with the effigy of Louis XVII.” “Very well,” I answered without hesitation, “let us go to the Committee of Public Safety.”

[C5-09 | source PDF 112–113]
I had understood that my rogues, having failed in their first attempt, meant to frighten me into a settlement. But this silver was property entrusted to my keeping. What suspicions would I expose myself to if, through lack of courage or composure, it were lost to its owner! That thought alone would have been enough to make me brave every danger, even had it not been in my nature to resist stubbornly every maneuver of fraud and theft. Yet how critical my position was becoming! I found myself between the fear of murder and the certainty of denunciation. Only an uproar could get me out of this den of cutthroats, but that would bring about the latter danger and the confiscation of the silver besides. At least my honor would be safe.

[C5-10 | source PDF 113–114]
Left alone with the stronger of the two Italians while the other went to fetch a hackney coach, I approached the window, but tried in vain to open it. It was firmly barricaded. The door was out of the question: the Italian stood ready to resist, holding it shut with his left foot. I therefore had to resign myself to pacing back and forth, cane in hand, before the silver, while my jailer tried to frighten me with threats. I now remembered the display of the large knife on the way and understood the impression they had meant to make. Fortunately, the cane I have mentioned concealed a sword, and I was firmly resolved not to leave without the property entrusted to me.

[C5-11 | source PDF 114–115]
The coach was a long time coming, but at last it arrived. I took hold of the basket; we carried it to the carriage, into which I jumped nimbly, pulling the door shut after me. They had anticipated this move. The two Italians immediately opened it again and sat down on the opposite seat, telling me I would not get off so easily and that they were coming with me. The coach followed the boulevard. We reached the entrance to the rue d’Artois. A triumphal arch had been erected nearby on the boulevard for the festivals of Reason. My companions called to the sentry stationed before it and told him that they were handing me over to him, with my basket of silver, and that he was to take me to the Committee of Public Safety. Their plan, as you see, was well contrived to secure their revenge while getting themselves out of a very awkward predicament. The military honors paid to Reason saved me; ever since, out of gratitude, I have called that revolutionary divinity, as some people term her, nothing but my good goddess. The sentry replied that he could not leave his post. We drove on, and a consultation followed. I understood enough Italian to make out what the two were saying. One thought the situation embarrassing; the other replied that it was nothing of the kind and kept repeating, like a man thoroughly convinced of his words, that he would soon dispatch me. At last fear for their own safety prevailed. They ordered the coachman to stop, declared that if I ever broke my silence about what had happened my life would be forfeit, then got out and strode away.

[C5-12 | source PDF 115–115]
How freely I breathed! It seems to me the reader must feel lighter too, both with me and for me. The agony had been long. How glad I was to have kept enough composure to await the outcome without causing an uproar that could only have harmed me! Scarcely had I reached the house when my courage deserted me and my heightened spirits subsided. Every limb began to tremble. I went to bed and stayed there for eight days, so powerful had the shock been, though held in check and concealed by the energy necessary in so difficult a situation.

[C5-13 | source PDF 115–116]
A few days later, in the house itself, another attempt was made to steal this silver. It was locked in my room. One night, when I had had my bed moved to the floor below to enjoy the cooler air, I heard someone picking that room’s lock. I got up at once and called, “Who goes there?” No answer. I went straight to the room of a Savoyard servant who was the only other person in the house. Despite the late hour he was not asleep, and he told me he had heard nothing. I then went to the door that had been tampered with: the pick had been left in the lock. I informed the mistress of the house. No one doubted, nor was it possible to doubt, that the servant was responsible, but we took care not to dismiss him. Such was the misery of the times that every master had to fear denunciation and slander from each of his servants. The order of things was thus reversed; deference and consideration became the servants’ prerogatives. To have a thief in your house, know him for what he was, be obliged to leave your possessions exposed to his dishonesty, and treat him almost reverentially: was this not one of those situations that revealed the upheaval which, by force of circumstances, was threatening to destroy the principles and foundations of society?

[C5-14 | source PDF 117–118]
In circumstances so critical, what ties could survive between people? What continual distrust one had to carry everywhere! Even business dealings were dangerous, and a trap had to be suspected in the simplest transaction. Thus a man presented himself at my door and asked, in the most natural tone, for Madame Chevalier’s address. He was, he said, a merchant accustomed to supplying her with various small articles she needed. His air of good nature caught me unprepared. I gave him the address, then regretted it almost at once and snatched it from his hands. It was too late. He took a police agent’s card from his wallet and ordered me to return the paper he had read. My wigmaker, I remember, was present, waiting with the tools of his trade in his hands, since the production of the official card had interrupted my grooming. He promptly slipped away, trembling at finding himself under the roof of a suspect, although he himself belonged to the revolutionary committee. When I refused to give up the address, I was taken to the revolutionary committee of the Section des Piques, whose president ordered me to obey.[C5-N1] Besides, my obstinacy was now pointless, since Madame Chevalier’s whereabouts were known. She was accordingly arrested at Luciennes and placed under surveillance in a house in the rue Joubert, locked up with many people of rank, among them Madame Monlévrier, Madame Lavoisier, and Madame and Mademoiselle de Beaumarchais.

[C5-15 | source PDF 118–119]
Among the inmates of this detention house, Madame Chevalier found one of the regular visitors to her drawing rooms, Monsieur Chenevix, an Englishman, rich and heedless, who spent his money as conspicuously and with as little restraint as if he were living in the monarchy’s most peaceful days. Four horses of the kind known as ponies drew far too much attention to his carriage. He was warned in vain to moderate his style of living and display less luxury. He ended by being classed among the suspects and placed under arrest. Fortunately, neither his arrest nor Madame Chevalier’s had fatal consequences. I cannot recall without a certain touch of vanity that I was the first to advise Monsieur Chenevix, then entirely unoccupied, if that word can be applied to a man concerned only with pleasure, to take up the study of chemistry. His experiments awakened his interest. Application followed and led to such progress that Monsieur Chenevix has since made a name for himself in that science in England, becoming known for discoveries and useful work.

[C5-16 | source PDF 119–119]
If my imprudent trust had indirectly caused Madame Chevalier’s arrest, chance gave me the means of preventing that of Monsieur de Sallabéry, now a deputy. I had met him at Monsieur Charles’s lectures, where he was one of the most regular and enthusiastic students, and, I must add, one of the wittiest and best informed. One evening, when I called at his home, I found members of the revolutionary committee there. I immediately sent someone to find Monsieur de Sallabéry and was fortunate enough to see my efforts succeed: he received the warning in time and did not return home.

[C5-17 | source PDF 119–120]
Perhaps it is to this circumstance that we owe his two-volume work on Turkey. Within a few days he was out of France and on his way to the Levant. Monsieur de Sallabéry then wrote with great ease, composed agreeable verses, and scattered very witty touches through charming attempts at comedy. His subsequent political course becomes less surprising when one remembers that, on the very day he escaped the inquisitors, his father arrived from Orléans to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal and, less fortunate than his son, perished shortly afterward on the scaffold. Otherwise it would have been an insoluble puzzle to me to see so enlightened a man join the enemies of enlightenment, a man surely far removed from every kind of religious fanaticism, and well able to profit from his own learning.

[C5-18 | source PDF 120–121]
Later, someone did me a similar service. Some old jokes found among my papers about the Manège, where the representatives had first assembled, and a few indiscreet remarks made in a public carriage on the Versailles road would have landed me in prison had I not been warned in time. I would have been all the more alarmed because a disturbing rumor had just spread: all letters posted to the Low Countries had, it was said, been stopped at the frontier and were about to be opened. I had just written one to Monsieur de Mortagne, brother of Monsieur de La Tremblay, the author of Letters on Italy, which had enjoyed great popularity on publication. It was to this Monsieur de La Tremblay that Voltaire addressed these pretty verses:

[C5-19 | source PDF 121–121]
That Chapelle, that Bachaumont,
Made a less fortunate journey;
All is epigram or song
In their celebrated banter.
You speak of a Pluto,
And I seem to hear Plato,
Who, returning from Syracuse,
Borrows in Athens the muse
Of Pindar and Anacreon.

[C5-20 | source PDF 121–121]
On another occasion the same poet sent him this quatrain:

[C5-21 | source PDF 121–121]
This lovely Lake Geneva, to which you have come,
Will soon show me the gloomy shores of Cocytus;
You are an Orpheus descended to these places
To come and enchant the shades.

[C5-22 | source PDF 121–122]
The two brothers belonged to Madame Chevalier’s circle and were even related to her. One, Monsieur de La Tremblay, died in France; the other, Monsieur de Mortagne, in Saint-Domingue, where he had gone with his relative, the Abbé Paroy, to recover extensive possessions.

[C5-23 | source PDF 122–123]
No longer daring to venture into the house in the rue Caumartin, I took lodgings in the rue Vivienne, at the Hôtel des Étrangers. I was sheltering there, so to speak, when the Ninth of Thermidor arrived. I had spent that whole day at Valenton, at Monsieur de Boulenois’s house. News had reached us that the alarm bells had rung and the drums had beaten the general call to arms in Paris. They insisted that I should not return until the next day, but curiosity made me persist. Some distance from the city gate I met several people hurrying away from it. I also noticed soldiers and armed men, though few in number, walking about and apparently busy. But for the rest of the journey, from the barrière d’Enfer to the place du Palais-Royal, an icy silence and the signs of anxiety on the few faces visible through half-open doors filled me too with a secret dread. I scarcely found a single person at the Palais-Royal of whom I could ask the time. This man looked at me hesitantly and fearfully, then went indoors without answering. I thought it prudent to withdraw. Before I had fallen asleep, cries of “Long live the Republic! Down with Robespierre!” told me something of what was happening. I waited until the next morning to learn more.

[C5-24 | source PDF 123–124]
Of all the members of the Convention who belonged to the Mountain, Robespierre is the one whose name still appears to ordinary people the most dreadful and deserving of execration. The whole present generation between twenty and thirty-five has never heard it spoken without a curse. Yet there is no Montagnard about whom the judgment of enlightened men of every party has already changed more, or undergone a more general revolution. Some say that, far from encouraging violence, he intended to put an end to it; others that his enemies loaded his memory with crimes they had themselves committed. Be that as it may, does it not seem necessary to explain how his death became a pledge of deliverance and a signal of freedom for so many prisoners on the point of becoming new victims? I have no intention of extending these reflections. Since such subjects have become entangled with my memories, it is enough to have offered a few very lightly drawn sketches of small scenes from private life. Such details are never without value in forming a picture of manners in times so dramatic.

[C5-25 | source PDF 124–124]
Order, sincerity, and freedom gradually returned. Members of the same family and scattered friends came together again; society, so to speak, reconstituted itself. I continued to pursue the physical sciences, whose study I had never interrupted, and to complete Monsieur Chevalier’s education.

[C5-26 | source PDF 124–125]
I cannot resist adding a few words in praise of his sister, one of the most accomplished people in every respect. Beauty, grace, wit, talents: she combined all these advantages to an uncommon degree. Her education had been entrusted to the most distinguished teachers. Her music masters were Messieurs Steibelt, the composer of Romeo and Juliet, Plantade, Herold, and Pradher; Monsieur Peskoski taught her painting. Her dancing master was no less renowned, and it can be said that she did credit to them all. She had become so proficient at the piano that her amateur talent could have earned her a fine professional reputation. This young lady became the wife of the Marquis de Broc, a senior officer of the Royal Guard, and was at once the pride and delight of her family.

[C5-27 | source PDF 125–125]
Before leaving this house, where several years passed so pleasantly for me, I must give an example of those disagreeable tricks with which young men sometimes seek to amuse themselves, and whose consequences may be dangerous. After the theater, some young men who frequented Madame Chevalier’s house would quite regularly gather in the drawing room for a few hours of conversation and laughter. It was therefore almost always one in the morning before they parted. This way of life was harming my health, so I took to going straight to my room after the theater.

[C5-28 | source PDF 125–125]
One night these gentlemen decided to amuse themselves at my expense and put my courage to the test; my pupil joined the plot. Foremost among them were Monsieur de Bauregard, the son of Monsieur de Ville-d’Avray, Monsieur Tourton, Monsieur Ouvrard’s antagonist, and a few others. La Caverne was then all the rage at the Théâtre Feydeau, and scenes of brigandage were fashionable. These gentlemen were delighted with the costumes in La Caverne and copied them to disguise themselves as robbers.

[C5-29 | source PDF 126–128]
Once everything had been arranged, Monsieur Chevalier, who had undressed, burst into my room, startled me awake just as I had fallen into my first sleep, and told me he could hear a noise in the drawing room. I urged him in vain to call the servants; he claimed he did not dare. I got up, went out onto the landing, and listened. I heard nothing. I went down to the first floor, where they wished to lure me. Someone moved beside me; I called out, demanding who was there. At once three people threw themselves upon me and knocked me down, while a disguised voice demanded to know where the money was and where the keys were. “Where is the money? I do not know, and I am not the master of the house to have the keys,” I answered, struggling. “What does that matter? We must have them. Hand over the money.” I kept giving the same answers to the same questions and struggling in their grasp. They redoubled their efforts to restrain me, doubtless hoping I would end by begging for mercy. But no: on the contrary, I managed to escape, for in the darkness they were seizing one another’s limbs, thinking them mine. I rushed into the drawing room and pushed the door shut against them. They quickly opened it again, but I had already armed myself with the heavy fire tongs. “The first man who comes forward,” I cried, “I will lay flat on the floor with one blow!” The foolish fellows were not intimidated and defied my threat. I carried it out. The nose of the boldest, Monsieur de Ville-d’Avray’s nose, I believe, was grazed along its entire length and suffered some damage to its skin; another man’s raised arm had softened the blow by sharing in the injury. The scene was becoming serious. The jest ended; the supposed robbers cried “Enough!” and tried to make themselves known. But I was hardly in a state to recover at the first word. I sought a way out through the window, determined to jump into the street to strike him down, and already calling for help. Now the conspirators were truly frightened. They called me by name, named themselves, and at last managed to reassure me, though not to calm my eloquent indignation at so senseless an amusement. I held forth until their jokes had changed the direction of my thoughts and their laughter had infected me. Yet afterward I could never refrain from mingling a few serious reflections with the jokes this adventure so often occasioned. I am not even sure that, in relating it after an interval of forty-five years, I do not still feel a little irritation.

[C5-30 | source PDF 128–128]
As I have said, then, I spent several years in Madame Chevalier’s house. But my health was deteriorating. The state of wasting in which I had found myself when I left Liège had returned in Paris. I was advised to take the waters at Spa and spend a few months in my native country. The desire to see it again after a first absence of six or seven years led me to follow this advice. I returned to find, no longer the capital of the Liégeois country and the eldest daughter of the Roman Church, but the chief town of the department of the Ourthe.

[C5-31 | source PDF 128–130]
After a month at Spa, which did my health a great deal of good, I returned to Liège. There I devoted myself almost exclusively to finding a mechanism that could reproduce the effects of Archimedes’ famous mirror, that is, make possible the very mirror whose existence I had heard discussed as highly doubtful. I had begun attending Monsieur Charles’s lectures in 1792. Some interesting details about the intensity acquired by sunlight when it passes through lenses or is reflected by a number of plane mirrors naturally led him to speak of Archimedes’ celebrated experiment. It is well known that, according to the ancient historians, this physicist burned Marcellus’s fleet from the walls of Syracuse by a method of catoptrics now lost to us. Monsieur Charles, who, as I have said, was not inclined to extend far enough the limits of what was possible in the arts, treated this tradition as a fable, while admitting that, if such a mirror had existed, its loss must be deeply regretted. Everything he said keenly excited my curiosity. With my natural ardor for anything that became the object of my work, I began to dream of reinventing this mirror. Time flew past without hastening my progress or weakening my courage. Monsieur Charles did not encourage me to persevere, declaring my undertaking impossible and chimerical. But a memoir by Buffon that came into my hands sustained and increased my enthusiasm. In it he said a word about the possibility of obtaining, by a simple and ingenious mechanism, a continuity, or, to use his own expression, a fluxion of focal points. That word from a man who, two years before Montgolfier, had glimpsed in the ascent of a soap bubble the means we would one day find to rise into the sky, that single word was enough to convince me that my attempts need not be fruitless and to make my resolve still more persistent. Indeed, some time later I was able, at one of Monsieur Charles’s sessions, to present an explanatory plan for a mechanism that could direct a series of mirrors. Slow, successive improvements eventually brought it to the form I shall shortly describe. First I wish to give some account of a metal burning mirror made by the father of Monsieur Villette, whom I have already mentioned. As I was discussing the object of my research with him, he told me about his father’s mirror, concerning which a rather singular incident of fanatical ignorance deserves to be related. The astonishment aroused by its various properties may also help us appreciate how little advanced or widespread the knowledge of physics then was. Perhaps we shall also be surprised that, over a hundred and fifty years, this mirror’s powerful effects did not lead to more applications of such intense burning action in warfare or industry. Here, then, is the description given in the Journal des Savans of 1679, under the following title:

[C5-32 | source PDF 131–131]
Description of the Surprising Effects of a Burning Mirror Invented by Monsieur Villette

[C5-33 | source PDF 131–131]
“This is the fourth and most accomplished of the burning mirrors to have come from Monsieur Villette’s hands. The first he made was bought by Monsieur Tavernier and presented to the King of Persia, who still keeps it among his rarest and most precious curiosities. The second was sold to the King of Denmark, who had it purchased in Lyon. Monsieur Villette had the honor of presenting the third to the King, from whom, after the astonishing experiments he performed with it, he received the praise and reward his merit and labor deserved.

[C5-34 | source PDF 131–132]
“It was thirty-four inches in diameter. In a moment it vitrified bricks and stones of any kind; in an instant it consumed the greenest wood and reduced it to ashes; in the same instant it melted every sort of metal. However hard steel might be, it resisted no better than the others. It melted in such a way that part ran off while the rest dissolved into sparks forming irregular stars as broad as a thirty-sol coin, but so penetrating that nothing can express the activity and violence of this fire.

[C5-35 | source PDF 132–132]
“The latest is still more powerful, larger, clearer, and more beautiful. It is forty-three inches in diameter and three inches and one line deep in its concavity. Its burning point, or focus, is three feet seven inches from the mirror’s surface. It is as broad as a five-sol piece or a stamped sol, and here all the sun’s rays meet and gather; here appear the admirable effects of the most violent and active fire in the world. The light at this point is so brilliant that the eyes can no more bear it than they can the light of the sun.

[C5-36 | source PDF 132–132]
“Besides the astonishing power of burning possessed by this mirror, various curious images may be observed in it.

[C5-37 | source PDF 132–133]
“It sends back the forms and images of objects from fifteen feet away and more. A man looking at himself in it, with a stick or sword in his hand, sees that hand so distinctly outside the mirror that, if he pretends to strike at the face of the image of one of those watching him, the spectator cannot help being dazzled and frightened at the same time.[C5-N2]

[C5-38 | source PDF 133–133]
“According to the mirror’s position and the objects before it, the images appear in such different ways that they are seen upright, small, large, and sometimes of so monstrously excessive a size and height that they astonish the observer.

[C5-39 | source PDF 133–133]
“On its convex side it diminishes these same images and reduces them so much that they seem to be very far away, yet remain quite distinct, delighting the eye with an agreeable and surprising perspective.

[C5-40 | source PDF 133–133]
“If the mirror is placed horizontally, objects, and especially the heads of those who look into it, appear so dreadful that they inspire fear, seeming no less than four or five feet high or long. If, at the point of confusion, an object is placed opposite it at a distance of about six to ten feet, the image of that object is seen to emerge outside, as though suspended in the air.

[C5-41 | source PDF 133–134]
“If at night a lighted torch is placed exactly at this mirror’s focal point, its whole face appears aflame at once, like the full moon as it begins to rise. It casts so much light in the opposite direction that, in the darkest night, one can read from more than five hundred paces away.

[C5-42 | source PDF 134–134]
“There are many other rare things to observe and curious experiments to make, but to relate them would take too long.”

[C5-43 | source PDF 134–135]
I have said that this mirror gave rise to a rather strange act of superstition. This will not surprise anyone who compares the effects just described with the reach of people’s understanding at that period, especially among the lowest classes, and in a city where apostolic Rome was perhaps more fully present than in Rome itself. It is enough to say that within its walls there were then as many as a hundred and fifty churches or convents for a population of fifty thousand souls. For purposes very remote from the principles of Christianity’s founder, Catholicism has always opposed the progress and emancipation of the human mind. While Monsieur Villette’s mirror was in Liège, it happened that the latter part of the season was very rainy. The harvest was difficult to bring in, and the price of bread consequently rose. Some ill-intentioned people, and it was long said to be a trick of the Jesuits, who wished to acquire the mirror, spread the rumor that the continuous rain must be blamed on it: it alone caused the bad weather and the high price of bread. This idea took such a hold among the people that a large crowd soon gathered, uttering every kind of curse against the mirror and its inventor. Growing more and more excited, it went to Monsieur Villette’s house to smash his work and do him personal harm. Fortunately Liège then had an enlightened prelate at its head. The crowds were dispersed by force, but their conviction was harder to destroy. It grew stronger and stronger, until Prince-Bishop Joseph-Clément felt obliged to resort to a pastoral decree. This document records an incident curious enough in the annals of superstition to deserve being placed before the reader. It was worded as follows:

[C5-44 | source PDF 135–136]
“Joseph Clément, by the grace of God Archbishop of Cologne, Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Archchancellor for Italy and Legate Born of the Holy Apostolic See, Bishop and Prince of Liège, of Ratisbon and of Hildesheim, Administrator of Bergtesgade; Duke of both Bavarias, of the Upper Palatinate, Westphalia, Enguien and Bouillon, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Landgrave of Leucthenberg, Marquis of Fanchimont, Count of Looz, Horne, etc.

[C5-45 | source PDF 136–136]
“To all who shall see these presents, greeting.

[C5-46 | source PDF 136–137]
“It having been most humbly represented to us that a rumor has spread in our city of Liège and its surroundings that one Nicolas-François Villette, who has resided in our said city for fifteen to eighteen years, attracts by means of his burning mirror the rains with which not only our country but the neighboring countries are chastised for their sins, we have felt obliged, by the care we owe our flock, to declare, as we hereby declare, that this is an error sown by ignorant or ill-intentioned persons, or even by the spirit of malice, which, by this means turning our people from the thought and certainty that they are chastised for their sins, makes them attribute God’s punishment to a mirror. We therefore declare that this mirror produces and can produce only purely natural and very curious effects, and that to believe it attracts or produces rain, and thus to attribute to it the power of opening or closing the heavens, which belongs to God alone, would be a most blameworthy superstition. Accordingly we order all parish priests and preachers in our diocese, wherever such an error may have crept in, to disabuse the people of it as far as lies in their power.

[C5-47 | source PDF 137–137]
“Given in our consistory of Liège, under the signature of the administrator of our vicariate general in spiritualibus, and under our customary seal, this twenty-second day of August, 1713.”

L. F.,
Bishop of Thermopole, Administrator
of the Vicariate General of Liège.

J. F. Choriste for P. Rollin.
Place (+) of the seal.

[C5-48 | source PDF 137–138]
If I thought these last details of some interest to philosophy, I also considered the description of the mirror itself of interest to the history of physics. Once a science has reached a certain degree of development, it is very common for its latest practitioners to forget most of their predecessors and cite only a few names that dominate the whole field. Thus the inventor of the burning mirror was born in Lyon. The illustrious Boërhave, who used it, praised it in several places in his chemistry, calling it nothing but “Villette’s excellent, incomparable mirror.” Yet I find Monsieur Villette’s name in no modern treatise on physics, although even today people are astonished by the melting of metal bars through a lens, and admire, quite rightly, Monsieur Frénel’s stepped lenses.

Original notes

[C5-N1 | source PDF 118–118]
I owed my freedom solely to an earlier acquaintance with this man, before whom I had performed galvanic experiments in the physics cabinet of Monsieur Tremeri senior. These experiments, then unknown, were the first to have been seen in Paris.

[C5-N2 | source PDF 132–133]
Monsieur Villette told me that Louis XIV, having stationed himself, sword in hand, a few paces before this mirror to see its effect properly, was surprised to find himself facing an arm that pointed a sword at him. He was told to advance suddenly. At once his adversary seemed to spring upon him. The king showed a movement of fear and was so ashamed that he had the mirror taken away.

Editorial record

The book’s own errata (Volume I, printed p. 448 / PDF470) correct masculin to muscadin on p. 91 and Steinbotter to Steibelt on p. 106. Both corrections are applied in the translation and French comparison.

The narrator’s retrospective chronology and reported claims are retained, including the Civil List administrator’s execution, galvanic experiments before the revolutionary committee, coins bearing Louis XVII’s effigy, and the relationship between the two Villettes. These are not independently verified historical conclusions.

On printed p. 109 the scan reads “sauter dans la rue pour le terrasser.” The singular “him” has no clear immediate antecedent. The translation retains the wording (“to strike him down”) rather than silently inventing a correction; this remains an editorial uncertainty.

French feet, inches and lines are rendered by their English unit names without modern conversion; they should not be read as calibrated modern imperial measurements. Coin names likewise remain historical denominations.

The two poems attributed to Voltaire retain their nine-line and four-line structures. The English prioritizes meaning over reproducing the rhyme scheme.

The printed forms Luciennes, La Tremblay, Bauregard, Frénel and the unusual territorial names and signatures in the 1713 decree are retained. “Catoptrics” means the study of reflected light. “Point of confusion” follows the quoted historical terminology.

Robertson’s political and religious judgments, including his discussion of legal crime and Catholicism, are translated as his views, without endorsement or silent alteration.

Chapter VI

The explosion of the Grenelle powder magazine. Kirker’s experiments on Archimedes’ mirror. Buffon’s experiments. My research on this mirror. My success. Recommendations and departure for Paris. A commission appointed by the Institute.

[C6-01 | source PDF 139–139]
Before describing my mirror, the memory of a serious accident I have omitted obliges me to retrace my steps. No one still living who was in Paris at the time can have forgotten the explosion of the Grenelle powder magazine, the dreadful shock it suddenly sent through the whole city, or the desolate scene that the site and its surroundings presented to the inhabitants who hurried there.

[C6-02 | source PDF 139–140]
On the day it happened, August 31, 1794, at seven in the morning, I had just risen and was preparing to dress. Our home, that is to say Madame Chevalier’s, was still in the rue Caumartin. Suddenly the whole house, the whole street, the whole neighborhood shook around me with a terrifying detonation. My first thought was of an earthquake and convulsions underground. I staggered twice and was thrown down. My furniture had shifted, and my door and windows, like all those in the house, had burst open, not inward but outward, through a kind of reaction, doubtless caused by the compression of the air inside.

[C6-03 | source PDF 140–141]
I got up at once and went to the window. I caught sight of Madame Chevalier, who had been thrown out of bed by the shock and, so distracted by her alarm that she forgot to dress, was fleeing in her light nightclothes. I reassured her by explaining that the crash and its effects were probably only the sound of cannon, several of which stood in a nearby yard and might have been fired together. But then I looked toward the place Louis XV and witnessed a most magnificent spectacle. An immense cloud, shaped like an inverted cone, or rather like an enormous mushroom spreading only at the top above a prodigious column, was rising slowly into the sky, carrying within it the wreckage of several buildings. This measured ascent lasted at least a quarter of an hour. The clouds on which our imagination, far more effectively than any resources of painting, shows us a god leaving the earth could not have been better represented. I had never seen anything so majestic. I then realized that the powder magazine housed in large buildings on the site of the old château of Grenelle had just blown up.

[C6-04 | source PDF 141–142]
Crowds of inhabitants were making their way toward the pont de la Révolution. The desire to help the wounded, to save the unfortunate if any could still be saved, stirred the Parisians no less strongly than curiosity. Like everyone else, I ran toward the scene. It is hard to picture anything more distressing. Most of the trees nearby had been uprooted or broken; the others had not kept a single leaf. Arms, legs and other fragments of human bodies hung from the branches or lay on the ground. As for the buildings, not one stone remained upon another: they had been razed to the ground. An enormous stone had been hurled to the other side of the river, and a heavily laden cart carried four hundred paces. A quarter of an hour, even half an hour after the explosion, a rain of earth and ash mixed with small pieces of wood and fragments of stone was still falling into the garden of our house in the rue Caumartin.

[C6-05 | source PDF 142–142]
I saw a workman being brought back, walking with difficulty and supported by the arms. This man, who had escaped death almost by a miracle, had his face burned by powder embedded in every pore of his skin; it was entirely ebony black. About a hundred workmen lost their lives. The wounded were taken to the nearest hospital. The wives and children of these unfortunate men crowded at the doors, desperate for information that no one could give them, calling loudly for their husbands or fathers in the hope, all too vain for most, that they would not be among the dead.

[C6-06 | source PDF 142–143]
The terror caused by this upheaval was so great in Paris that the Convention assembled and did not adjourn until it had learned the details and become certain that no further danger remained. At first the explosion was blamed on malicious intent. The patriots denounced the aristocrats, and the aristocrats the Jacobins. A pamphlet against the latter even appeared under the title The Tail of Robespierre and caused a great sensation. Almost exactly a month had passed since Robespierre’s execution. The opinion that the accident had been caused by chance alone eventually prevailed. At least these deplorable consequences prevented any repetition of the recklessness that had allowed powder stores to be established close to such a vast concentration of dwellings. What remained of the powder magazine was transferred to Essonne.

[C6-07 | source PDF 143–143]
I return to my mirror of Archimedes. It is known that Proclus used the same means at Constantinople, and I see in Condorcet’s eulogy of Monsieur Buffon that Tzetzès, whom I have not read, left a description of this mirror showing that they had used a system of plane mirrors. Among all those in our country who have written on this subject and tested it experimentally, Father Kirker must be mentioned first. Here is a translation of the essential passage:

[C6-08 | source PDF 143–144]
“The greater the surface of a flat mirror, the more light it reflects onto the plane facing it. Does it have only a foot of surface? It will send only a foot of light onto the wall, and even then the wall must be close by. Experience teaches us that this light consists of an infinite number of rays reflected by the different points on the mirror’s surface. Direct a second plane mirror toward the same place as the first, and the light and heat will be doubled. They would be tripled if you directed a third plane mirror in the same way, and so on without limit. To prove that the intensity of light and heat is directly proportional to the reflecting surfaces, I took five mirrors (fig. 2), exposed them to the sun, and found that the light reflected by the first gave me less heat than direct sunlight. With two mirrors the heat increased considerably; three gave me the heat of a fire; four gave me heat I could scarcely bear. I therefore concluded that by multiplying plane mirrors I would not only obtain greater effects than those produced at the focus of parabolic, hyperbolic and elliptical mirrors, but would obtain them at a greater distance. Five mirrors produced these effects at a hundred feet. What terrible phenomena might be seen if a thousand mirrors were used!”

[C6-09 | source PDF 144–144]
He then implores mathematicians to attempt this terrible experiment with the greatest care.

[C6-10 | source PDF 145–145]
In 1747, that is to say one hundred and twenty-eight years after Kirker, Monsieur Buffon wished to carry out this same experiment on a large scale. He used a mirror composed of one hundred and sixty-eight pieces of tinned glass, each six inches in size. All the public experiments made with this mirror at the Jardin des Plantes are described in detail in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1747. Here is a passage: “On April 5, 1747, at three in the afternoon, with a pale sun veiled in vapor and light clouds, in short weaker than on the previous day, fir shavings were set alight at a distance of one hundred and fifty feet in less than a minute and a half, using one hundred and fifty-four mirrors. When the sun is strong, ignition takes only a few seconds.” During the same year, before the eyes of all Paris, Monsieur Buffon burned combustible material placed on the other side of the Seine. Each mirror was held and exposed to sunlight by a soldier, and they all directed them as well as they could toward the same point.

[C6-11 | source PDF 145–147]
Yet despite these effects, we must acknowledge, with all physicists, that this was not the mirror of Archimedes. That mirror was evidently constructed to reach objects with the speed of an arrow, to follow an object in motion, such as a ship tossing about, and to adjust its focus according to the object’s distance. It must, in short, have been driven by a mechanism as simple as one would expect from the mighty genius who gave mechanics the theory of the lever, conic sections and the screw, a means of resistance worthy, so to speak, of contending with the principle that impels the worlds in their spherical motion. Buffon’s machine has none of these advantages. The chief objections to his mirror are the impossibility of moving the focus farther away or nearer as promptly as circumstances may require; the impossibility of making the machine follow the sun’s daily motion, and consequently of keeping that focus fixed on the same object for more than five or six minutes; and finally the considerable time needed to give each piece of glass, one after another and by hand, the necessary degree of inclination. Two hours are not enough to arrange one hundred and sixty-eight mirrors in this way. These disadvantages have left the instrument useless in the physicist’s hands. Its only service has been to help dispel such doubts about the existence of Archimedes’ mirror as might still remain in certain minds too little confident in the resources of human genius.

[C6-12 | source PDF 147–147]
Before setting out to discover the means the immortal Syracusan must have used, I thoroughly acquainted myself with the imperfections and difficulties of arranging plane mirrors in a parallelogram according to Buffon’s method. I saw a better chance of success in bringing them together in a figure whose geometrical elements could give me proportional relationships applicable to mechanics. Only a circle could offer these advantages. It is indeed the simplest and most perfect figure in geometry; its shape is less cumbersome for a large machine and at the same time provides the greatest room within the smallest space.

[C6-13 | source PDF 147–148]
My first attempts used a cone A (fig. 3), whose inclined surfaces moved toothed racks B equally. These engaged with toothed half-wheels, across whose diameters the mirrors D were fixed. That is to say, as the cone was pushed horizontally into the central hub O (fig. 4) or withdrawn from it, all these mirrors tilted toward Z. Consequently the levers, in every direction, rose or fell together and moved all the wheels fixed at point C on a solid circular frame upward or downward, tilting or straightening all the mirrors at the same time and uniformly. There is no need to point out that behind each mirror in figure 4 there is a wheel, as with the mirrors D, though the perspective hides it from view.

[C6-14 | source PDF 148–148]
These means, though judged ingenious, were complicated. They also limited the number of mirrors by allowing only a single circle. The engagement of the racks alone demanded a very exact and difficult precision. Well-informed people raised these objections, and I acknowledged them. They agreed that the geometrical possibility had now been demonstrated, and I agreed that the mechanical realization had not been achieved.

[C6-15 | source PDF 148–149]
Convinced of the truth that the simplest idea seldom presents itself first, I undertook to correct some of these defects. Without making my machine any larger, I found a way to operate two and even three circles at once. The chief difficulty arose from the faster movement of the inner circles. I devised smaller gearing for them, making their rotation proportional to that of the others (fig. 5). Though less limited than the first, this method retained its other disadvantages, and I abandoned it. The strain on my imagination almost made it wander. For a time I went backward, finally seeking a movable focus through means so complicated that I gave way to discouragement and stopped working on the problem. To persuade me to resume it required all the exhortations of a very capable man. Knowing the restless activity I needed to prevent a return of my mental illness, he came to reassure me and held out the prospect of the greatest success if I could simplify my first methods.

[C6-16 | source PDF 149–150]
After some reflection, I removed the racks and wheels, replacing them (fig. 6) with simple levers A and a single radial arm I D. This was a step toward simplicity, but I had only one circle. To obtain several, I devised two cones A B (fig. 7), whose inclined surfaces would differ in proportions suited to making the mirrors coincide. Another method was to place the driving tooth R closer to the axis S (fig. 8). Difficult construction, a bulky and complicated apparatus, and considerable friction were the defects of this new mechanism.

[C6-17 | source PDF 150–150]
I saw that I must avoid using springs, and consequently replace the cone with some other means of driving the mechanism. I encountered many obstacles and made many attempts that I shall pass over in silence. At last I found a method that fulfilled part of my purpose (fig. 9):

[C6-18 | source PDF 150–150]
Levers bent at right angles support mirrors whose axes are placed at the vertex M. Their movement is controlled by cords P, which wind onto two unequal pulleys, the smaller taking the cords from the inner circle. Here again, springs X maintain the levers’ position. This arrangement was therefore open to the objection that it used springs whose resistance was so difficult to balance, and also that these threads or cords were liable to changes caused by humidity.

[C6-19 | source PDF 150–151]
Further research, or perhaps rather a chance inspiration, led me to a much greater degree of simplicity. For all these controlling cords I substituted two metal arms, moving independently of one another and receiving all the ends of the levers. The rigidity of these common supports dispensed with springs and at the same time prevented even the slightest interruption in the mirrors’ back-and-forth movement from one position to another. To complete the discovery, all that remained was to invent a mechanism capable of carrying the common focus of this large number of mirrors to any distance with accuracy and precision. After combining all the data supplied by theory in my effort to devise such a means, I was greatly surprised to find it suddenly in one of Archimedes’ most glorious discoveries. The screw that bears his name perfectly answered my purpose. I adapted it to my mirror, just as, in all human probability, he had adapted it to his own (fig. 10).

[Original illustration: plate-ii-mirror-designs.png]
Original plate, figures 2–10: successive mirror arrangements. Engraved labels: Incidence; Reflection; Angle of incidence. Click the image to inspect it at full size.

[C6-20 | source PDF 151–152]
I thus saw my labors brought to their conclusion. The model I had made fulfilled the conditions I had set myself. Though built on a very small scale, all the mirrors reflected their light to a common focus, and within a given range I could move that focus forward or backward at will, without any individual divergence. I therefore believed I could now say that Archimedes’ mirror had been reinvented.

[C6-21 | source PDF 152–152]
Accordingly, I applied to the departmental administration of the Ourthe, asking it to appoint two of its members to examine my mirror and verify its effects. The report of these two members, Messieurs Pitou and Defrance, was as favorable as I could have wished. I shall transcribe a few passages here:

[C6-22 | source PDF 152–153]
“The obstacles,” they said, “which Kirker’s almost universal knowledge and Buffon’s researches could not overcome seem to us to have been conquered by Citizen Robert’s efforts and perseverance.[C6-N1] His machine, of the greatest simplicity, can carry its focus to a very great distance and bring it back, as quickly as a word can be spoken, to the shortest possible distance; it can follow restless movements in every direction and obey the course of the sun. All these effects require so little force and so little coordination that a child would need to see it operated only once to produce them all.

[C6-23 | source PDF 153–153]
“If the respect we owe to Monsieur Robert’s property, acquired only at the cost of several years of patience and labor, allowed us to describe the means by which he obtains such satisfactory results, you would be struck by their extreme simplicity and the ease with which they can be put to use. You could not help saying, as his brother did on learning of them, and as we did when he explained them to us, ‘What! Is that all?’ And those words would be praise, for any machine is the more perfect the less complicated it is. …

[C6-24 | source PDF 153–155]
“If the effects of this machine, as swift as they are terrible, answer to what we must expect and to the hopes its inventor has formed, what services may the Republic not expect from it in the present war? Built on a large scale and placed on our coasts, its focus, directed horizontally at the rigging of a ship bold enough to approach them, severs the ropes and in an instant puts them beyond use. Directed at the food stores of a besieged town, it will end in an hour sieges that last several months. But let us cease to consider it from this frightening point of view, in which it offers us yet another means of destruction. How useful will it not be to the arts, in works, factories and laboratories where fire is the principal agent, and in a state where the scarcity of wood is already so keenly felt? What services will it not render to agriculture and architecture by quickly and cheaply reducing rock to a lime as suitable for enriching the soil as for building? There would be no end to an account of all the advantages Citizen Robert’s discovery might produce. Nor is it the only discovery this industrious physicist has made. I shall content myself with pointing out two others that are not unworthy of attention. By the first, a statesman or man of letters can, in the middle of the night, without light, ink, pen or pencil, put down on paper the happy idea that interrupts his sleep and that he fears forgetting. This discovery is of great importance to humanity because the unfortunate citizen deprived of the most precious of the senses, sight, can communicate, write, and even leave off and resume his work without fear of the slightest confusion. The second, whose mechanism is infinitely simpler than a steam pump, can set several pistons in motion and raise considerable volumes of water with the aid of a driving power whose force is such that geometry may not yet have calculated it.[C6-N2]”

[C6-25 | source PDF 155–155]
The two examiners ended their report by asking the departmental administration and the Directory’s commissioner attached to it to grant me their full protection, so that my horse and carriage would not be taken from me through some unforeseen requisition, and so that, once in Paris, I might have ready access to members of the government. I therefore set out as my department’s delegate to present my invention to the Directory, furnished with emphatically worded letters of recommendation.

[C6-26 | source PDF 155–156]
Among the officers who signed my pass along the way, one, General Kermorvan, took the advantages my mirror might offer in military operations very much to heart. He immediately dreamed of all the Republic’s enemies reduced to ashes, and added the following note at the foot of the certificate:

[C6-27 | source PDF 156–156]
“The person named herein has been seen passing through. I urge all true republicans to assist Citizen Robert and protect him, so that he may communicate to the government a discovery of importance in the present war.

“Valenciennes, 27 Pluviôse, Year IV of the Republic.

“General Kermorvan.”

[C6-28 | source PDF 156–158]
The letters I carried were not without their use. I presented myself at the Ministry of the Interior, during the brief administration of the same Monsieur Bénézech in whose house I had lived as a tutor. Examination of my discovery was referred to the National Institute, which appointed Messieurs Monge, Guiton de Morvau and Lefebvre Gineau as commissioners. Some time passed before these gentlemen could attend to the matter. One day, however, they were kind enough to come to my home at noon. Monsieur Lefebvre Gineau, younger than his colleagues, left them to reflect and spoke quite vigorously on their behalf. His chief objection was that to reproduce the sun’s image at a certain distance would require mirrors whose surfaces were so precisely parallel that it would be very difficult to give them the necessary degree of perfection. I was then living in the rue de Provence, opposite the rue Pelletier. But the whole broad space between that street and the boulevard, now covered with such splendid houses, was still unbuilt and offered only gardens or uncultivated ground. The entire rear façade of the Théâtre Italien lay before my eyes. I sent for a small, crude, cheap mirror from the servant’s room. ‘This one,’ I said, ‘was surely not made for my demonstration. Yet kindly look at the Théâtre des Italiens, and although the sun is very pale, you will see its image skim along the wall.’ Monsieur Lefebvre Gineau immediately abandoned that objection. After a few others of the same kind, which I refuted with equal success, he finally said, ‘Well then! Supposing all the conditions of this mechanism can be met, how will this discovery benefit society?’ At a question so unexpected, and so singular on such an occasion, I was quite taken aback. Then I merely replied, ‘True, I had not thought of that.’ Guiton de Morvau seemed absorbed in some profound meditation, while Monge, listening to a drum sounding in the distance, showed a kind of anxious preoccupation. Neither gentleman therefore appeared to hear his colleague’s objections. A few words were exchanged on general subjects, and we parted.

[C6-29 | source PDF 158–161]
All that remained was to await the report to be made to the Ministry of the Interior. It was postponed from day to day, until, tired of so many delays, I pursued the matter no further. Meanwhile, the mechanism of my mirror had become simpler still. I thought of presenting it to the Institute myself and finding consolation in the approval I hoped to gain from that learned body. Imagine (fig. 11) three circular planes, vertical and parallel: the first, stationary, supporting the shafts of mirrors B, which pass through openings perpendicular to the center; the second, C, receiving the ends of those same handles in oblique grooves and, by its simple movement, tilting them all to a greater or lesser degree, at will, toward a single center; finally the third, D, carrying a pointer which, moved to the right or left along a scale like that of a half-dial, moves the middle plane and determines the mirrors’ inclination according to the number of degrees. You will then have Archimedes’ mirror, as simple, it seems to me, as that great physicist could ever have imagined it.

[C6-30 | source PDF 161–161]
I attended a meeting of the Academy of Sciences with a small apparatus built on this model. With it I operated only eight little mirrors, which alone were visible, everything else being carefully wrapped. I moved them as easily as precisely. The curious effect, combined with the simplicity of the mechanism, aroused astonishment and brought me congratulations from all the members present. Their applause was enough for me. Unfamiliar with the Institute’s customs, I asked neither for a mention in the minutes nor for an extract from them. I withdrew with my machine and gave it to Monsieur Charles. It has never since left his magnificent collection.

[C6-31 | source PDF 161–162]
To complete this account of the mirror, I have shown in figure 14 its position for transport, and in figure 13 its position when used for melting metals.

[Original illustration: plate-iii-archimedes-mirror.png]
Archimedes’ mirror with a movable focus. Figure 11, mechanism; figure 14, transport position; figure 13, operating position. Engraved explanation: “C: Middle plane. As it turns, it inclines mirrors B, whose handles E E slide in the oblique grooves G G, varying the focus at will.” Click the image to inspect it at full size.

Original notes

[C6-N1 | source PDF 152–152]
My family name, as can be seen here, is Robert. The word son was added only through a very common custom in the Low Countries when a father and son are both living and inhabit the same place. Son in English and Flemish, and soon in Dutch, mean “son.” Robertson therefore means “Robert the son.” I have been known in so many countries and for so many years by the name Robertson that I did not think I should remove its last syllable, which would have made the name unrecognizable, especially abroad.

[C6-N2 | source PDF 155–155]
On these two subjects, see a note at the end of the volume.

Editorial record

Printed page 128 is missing from the Getty 1840 scan: PDF 146 contains an illustration. The missing text in C6-11 is supplied from printed 128/PDF 148 of the 1831 copy at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library (Internet Archive mmoiresrcratifss01robe). The title page and adjacent printed pages 127 and 129 were visually compared; surrounding text and pagination match. This is an explicitly documented supplementation from an earlier edition, not a claim that the absent 1840 page has been inspected.

The book’s own errata (printed 448/PDF 470) replace the passage on printed 129 about the entire apparatus moving toward Z or X with “tous ces miroirs s’inclinaient vers Z.” The correction is applied in the English and French comparison, although the resulting account of the mechanism remains awkward.

Historical claims, casualty estimates, chronology, technical assertions and the narrator’s explanation of his name are retained as source claims, not independently verified conclusions. The text gives August 31, 1794 for the explosion. It prints Kirker, Guiton de Morvau, Lefebvre Gineau and soon; those spellings are retained.

Crics is rendered “toothed racks,” in keeping with figures 3–5; rayon I D is “radial arm I D.” Historical units are not converted to modern imperial measurements. The comparison retains the source’s unusual descriptions “surface…parallèle” and “ouvertures perpendiculaires au centre,” translated without silently redesigning the apparatus. The discussion and figures are a historical account, not a verified engineering reconstruction.

The ellipsis in the quoted report on printed 135 is in the original. Author note 2 refers forward to a note at the end of Volume I, printed 441; that material has not yet been translated in this cumulative draft. Both original plates are reproduced with their original numbering, including the absence of a figure 12 on the second plate.

On supplemented printed 128, English punctuation treats “the theory of the lever, conic sections and the screw” as a list; the French scan has no comma after levier. The unusual following image concerning the spherical motion of worlds is retained.

Chapter VII

First ideas for phantasmagoria. The advantages and usefulness of experimental physics. Old books on magic. The Occult Sciences, by Monsieur Salverte. Trials in the nomes of Egypt. Phantasmagoria among the Egyptian priests and the Greeks.

[C7-01 | source PDF 163–163]
Throughout the delays in examining my mechanism and preparing the report on it, I was busily perfecting an invention whose first means of execution I had glimpsed in Liège. I mean phantasmagoria.

[C7-02 | source PDF 163–165]
From my earliest childhood, my lively and passionate imagination had placed me under the spell of the marvelous. Everything that crossed the ordinary bounds of nature, which at different ages are merely the bounds of our own knowledge, stirred in me a curiosity and an ardor that drove me to attempt anything to bring about the effects I imagined. Father Kircher, they say, believed in the devil. So much the worse: the example might prove contagious, for Father Kircher possessed such immense learning that many people would be tempted to think that, if he believed in the devil, he had good reasons for doing so. But since the writer who reproached him for this credulity cited no passages containing the confession, and I have not verified it, I do not take the matter seriously. Who has not believed in the devil and werewolves in his early years? I freely confess that I believed in the devil, in conjurations, enchantments, infernal pacts, and even witches’ broomsticks. I believed that an old woman who lived next door was, as everyone assured me, in regular dealings with Lucifer. I envied her power and her connections. I shut myself in a room to cut off a rooster’s head and force the chief of demons to appear before me. I waited seven or eight hours for him. I harried him, insulted him and heaped abuse on him for not daring to appear. ‘If you exist,’ I cried, pounding on my table, ‘come out of wherever you are and show your horns! Otherwise I disown you; I declare that you have never existed.’ As you can see, it was not fear that made me believe in his power, but the desire to share it so that I too could produce magical effects. Books of magic turned my head. Porta’s Magia naturalis and Midorge’s Récréations, above all, kept me awake at night. At last I made a very sensible decision: since the devil refused to teach me the science of performing wonders, I set about making devils myself. My wand had only to move to force the whole infernal procession into the light. My home became a true Pandemonium.

[C7-03 | source PDF 165–166]
It has long been said that only our grandmothers still believe in the devil and his works. Unfortunately this assertion is untrue, and most of our countryside would still be subject to the dominion of any rogue who claimed to exercise power over its credulity. One need only cite the recent miracle of the cross at Migné, which I shall discuss elsewhere. Much fun has been made of the superstition of the ancients. Numerous incidents have been collected that could put their intelligence to shame and, so to speak, give the lie to their civilization. Well! I suspect that if we gathered the ghost stories, the supernatural discoveries, the miraculous apparitions, the published accounts of that singular correspondence between heaven and earth; if, I say, we gathered all the stories of this kind that have circulated for a moment in our hamlets and villages merely since the Revolution, before which so much darkness has nevertheless dispersed, the collection would be no less voluminous than that of the miracles of antiquity.

[C7-04 | source PDF 166–167]
There are, it is true, certain people in the world endowed with self-importance and pedantry, whose habit in everything is to reduce the whole world to their own insignificant selves. It seems that all France assembles in their brains at the appointed moment, and that the faintest ray illuminating that little cavity acquires in passing through it such brilliance that even the most ignorant mountaineer of the Hautes-Alpes must feel its reflected light. How could these shepherds be ignorant of what a young scholar has himself learned in lectures at the Sorbonne or the Collège de France? What further use is there for the books he no longer needs, from which he drew the notions that make him so proud? Can anyone be ignorant of their contents, since he knows them? Has he happened to read some well-founded, or at least plausible, conjectures about the methods once used to create illusions that deceived so many centuries? Has he understood, thanks to work he disdains after profiting from it, that these same illusions can be produced and that the progress of science seems to challenge the whims of the most fertile imagination? ‘What is the use?’ he asks when someone comes forward to dispel the last degree of doubt still separating the possibility of a fact from its existence. Do we not know that shades and phantoms are merely imaginary visions, or things an easy art could reproduce? Would we learn any more by seeing with our own eyes what simple people gazed upon in such terror thousands of years ago?

[C7-05 | source PDF 167–168]
Yes, certainly we learn more, and no mathematical demonstration can equal actual execution. It is like asking whether an account of an event gives an idea as exact, vivid and animated as the sight itself. What a difference there is between judging from a rough impression or imagination and judging with one’s eyes; between the testimony and observations of others and the testimony and impressions of one’s own senses! And how many improvements must be invented to put into practice even the theory that appears most complete! What, then, when that theory, the theory of light, for example, of its increase and diminution, its concentration and movement, has offered, when applied to the object on which the artist is working, only confused data, imperfect processes and faulty means that have yielded no satisfactory result?

[C7-06 | source PDF 168–170]
Another valuable advantage of supposedly supernatural phenomena that are not merely explained but performed, made present before everyone, is that while they confirm the speculations of science and fulfill the expectations of learned people, they also bring the benefits of instruction to ordinary people in advance of education and effectively make up for its absence. How many people have no time to read, and may never read, the books that teach us not to fear specters and to scorn supposed resurrections or apparitions of the dead? Yet try to frighten most people whom a few performances have made familiar with phantasmagoria by telling them such lying tales: you will certainly meet with nothing but incredulous laughter and mockery. Even newspapers, those mouthpieces of civilization along every road, must remain unknown for a long time to most of the population. A thousand obstacles, such as lack of money, the farmer’s perfectly understandable thrift, the absence of elementary schooling and daily gatherings, and finally the difficulty of travel by road, will prevent them from reaching village homes quickly enough, where the most ridiculous superstitions still prevail. It is for the inhabitants of these rural districts that people point out on a rock the footprints of some saint who came down expressly during the night; that recent letters from Jesus Christ are placed on altars; that vapors rising from the earth are transformed into damned souls from purgatory; that luminous crosses are hoisted above steeples; and that poor dead people, tormented by the impiety of the living, are brought out of their tombs. Certainly, let a skillful priest take a phantasmagoria and all its accessories into the depths of a Gothic church surrounded by a cemetery, and he can be sure of bringing the terrified peasants to their knees, even with their foreheads to the ground, or rather of sending them fleeing, carrying tales of terror to every neighboring commune and for ten leagues around. Suppose, instead of a man using science to deceive them, a philosopher appears who wishes to enlighten them. Having protected them, through warnings suited to their understanding, against the emotional impression of the effects they are about to witness, he will do more to spread enlightenment among these simple people than thousands of volumes have done since the invention of printing, not one of which has yet reached them.

[C7-07 | source PDF 170–170]
The same is true of the demonstration of every phenomenon wrested from nature. To accustom minds to them, first accustom eyes. Do not say that they are easy to produce: show them. You will be understood and believed more readily:

[C7-08 | source PDF 170–170]
What enters through the ear moves us less
Than what is placed before our faithful eyes.

[C7-09 | source PDF 170–171]
We rightly despise the ignorant fellow who uses a few commonplace tricks to prey on the public’s good faith and money. But why should we refuse esteem and honor to the hardworking physicist who devotes himself to experiment rather than reasoning? Are these two branches not distinct within science, and does one render fewer services than the other? In most, indeed in all human knowledge without exception, has practice not invariably preceded, established and then corrected theory? Must facts not exist before we deduce their connections and calculate the full range of their consequences? Chance, as everyone knows, has been the father of great discoveries. But this chance gives only to those who ask, or who act in order to find, even if they encounter one thing while seeking another. We do not discover unknown countries by staying at home. The whole of physics is owed to experiments prompted far more by curiosity than by considerations of usefulness. Through calculation and reasoning you will establish the order and general laws of a science’s phenomena and extend their range, but calculation and reasoning will not invent that science’s first data. Only the good fortune attendant on experiments can supply them. Thus, despite the already well-established theory of electricity, no one had calculated the existence of galvanism. Physicists who were highly renowned then and remain so today, and in other respects thoroughly deserve their reputation, were still openly laughing at it even as I reproduced its phenomena before the public at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier in 1794.

[C7-10 | source PDF 171–172]
I believe these observations suffice to prove the importance of experimental physics and to show that those who teach it with talent also deserve esteem and encouragement. I have likewise sufficiently shown how much more essential it is to popular instruction than theoretical and general precepts. Yet I do not wish to forgo the honor of support on this last point from the opinions of a man of the highest merit, whose recent death, together with Laplace’s, constitutes the two greatest losses geometry has suffered for many years. Here is how Monsieur Fourrier expressed himself in his historical eulogy of Monsieur Charles, delivered at the Academy of Sciences in the session of June 16, 1828:

[C7-11 | source PDF 172–173]
“Rational and mathematical physics will always belong to a small number of reflective minds, and this profound study is necessary. To be unable to grasp the secret and immutable relationships that unite the great phenomena is to be ignorant of nature. But experimental physics instructs everyone. It admits light through the gate of the senses; it points out general facts to the mathematician and gives him measurements for which nothing can substitute. It bears witness to everyone of the greatness of the sciences and shows man disposing of the forces of nature at will.”

[C7-12 | source PDF 173–174]
It is through discoveries owed to experimental physics and chemistry that the mysterious apparitions and wonders employed by the oracles of antiquity have been explained. These invocations of the spirits of the dead; the power of love potions and magical conjurations; the moon’s obedience to the sorceress who commands it to descend and prescribes another course for it: all these operations of ancient witchcraft, found in many places in Greek and Latin authors, in which the poets Homer, Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, Catullus, Lucan and others delight, have ceased to be lies or fictions and become real effects, produced by sciences once occult and now known to anyone who has received the most ordinary education. I said at the beginning of this chapter that it was wrong to consign to the ranks of worthless old books the works that reveal this part of ancient history and expose, one after another, the mechanisms of priestly power. Before abandoning them as exhausted quarries, we should have waited for a conscientious work to summarize their contents, citing each author to give him his due, and to form a distinct body of history covering the Egyptian mysteries, Greek and Roman oracles, the sacrifices and predictions of the Druids, and every related branch of divination in all ages and among all peoples. I had undertaken such a work and gathered a great quantity of material. I would have called it The Art of Illusions. But in my travels I lost all my notes, and even a notebook I had already written.

[C7-13 | source PDF 174–175]
A writer whose learning is as profound as his style is exact, Monsieur Eusèbe Salverte, has very recently published a two-volume work on this subject under the title The Occult Sciences, or Essays on Magic, Prodigies and Miracles. For anyone who likes to see truth emerge from the fog accumulated around it, and events thought possible proved by the evidence of the causes that must have produced them, this is an excellent book. It not only contains a great quantity of documents and an almost complete collection of marvelous traditions; brief discussions and judicious observations everywhere set light beside obscurity and dispel the darkness. We may say that henceforth this work should accompany ancient history as a commentary, restoring to historians their reputation for truthfulness, tarnished by so many narratives hitherto dismissed as fabulous. The author has been reproached for explaining most of these narratives before establishing whether the substance of the account was true. But this latter kind of discussion was not part of his purpose: it would have greatly lengthened his work, introduced an entire book within his own, and destroyed the unity of his aim. When it is established that a great number of wonders have apparently occurred and can easily be repeated, either by the same means or by means we must conclude were analogous, what does a greater or lesser number matter? To demonstrate clearly, not that all historical events believed supernatural are true, but that all could have been; to show that however repugnant to our reason even the best-attested event may seem, we can provide a satisfactory explanation, since we can reproduce it through well-known processes: such, I think, was Monsieur Salverte’s eminently useful and philosophical purpose, and he has fulfilled it.

[C7-14 | source PDF 176–176]
The great number of subjects presented for our examination and explained through their causes in The Occult Sciences demanded precision and brevity in each case. Every quotation is brief, and everywhere the subject is only touched upon, as it had to be, though sufficiently clarified for the scholar or educated reader to master it and reach a judgment without further research. But for young people, or those who have confined themselves to the ordinary study of history, the work clearly cannot offer the narrative interest and curiosity that come with fuller treatment. My plan allowed more of that interest: most of it was narrative. Monsieur Salverte’s book is that of a man talking about what he knows with people who know as much. Mine would have aimed to teach those who lack the time, the opportunity or the familiarity with books to acquire this kind of knowledge.

[C7-15 | source PDF 176–177]
Of what I had prepared for that essay, there remains a plate depicting the trials by the four elements to which initiates were subjected in the underground chambers of the nome of Memphis. I include it here, since I shall probably have no opportunity to place it elsewhere, and its subject, far from being foreign to the one I am treating, naturally belongs to it. The first trial demanded the first sign of self-renunciation or the first effort of courage. It meant descending into the earth to an unknown depth through a passage narrow in every direction, along which one could advance only by crawling on one’s belly, without knowing where it would end. In other secret underground chambers, in the cave of Trophonius, for example, one entered through an opening barely large enough for the body, and suddenly felt oneself sliding or being pulled to the bottom of a steep slope.

[C7-16 | source PDF 177–177]
After a long journey and several circumstances I omit, the candidate found, at the entrance to a passage six feet wide with a semicircular vault, an inscription traced in black letters on very white marble. It read: Whoever travels this road alone, without looking behind him, shall be purified by FIRE, WATER and AIR; and if he can overcome the fear of death, he shall emerge from the depths of the earth, see the light again, and earn the right to prepare his soul for the revelation of the mysteries of the great goddess Isis.

[C7-17 | source PDF 177–178]
There began the three trials just mentioned. Here I shall let the Abbé Terrasson speak. He described these three trials in detail in his novel Séthos, and I had followed his description in designing my engravings:

[C7-18 | source PDF 178–179]
“The candidate,” he says, “saw at the end of his passage the glow of a very white and brilliant flame that had just been lit. Séthos quickened his pace to approach it. The passage ended in a vaulted chamber more than a hundred feet in length and breadth. On entering, he found a pyre to his right and another to his left, or rather closely set upright timbers, around which branches of Arabian balsam, Egyptian thorn and tamarind, three very supple, fragrant and combustible woods, were twined like vine shoots. The smoke escaped through long pipes provided for the purpose. But the flame, which easily rose to the vault and curled back in waves, made the space it occupied resemble a blazing furnace. Moreover, on the ground between the two pyres Séthos found an iron grating, heated red-hot, eight feet wide and thirty feet long. The grating was formed of diamond shapes that left scarcely enough room between them for a foot. He understood that he could go no farther except by this route, and crossed it with as much speed as care. Most trials by fire mentioned by historians are nothing other than these. But historians who do not know the truth of the matter, or wish to exaggerate the marvelous, say that a man passed through the flames instead of saying that he passed between two hedges of flame; and that he walked upon burning irons instead of saying that he walked between burning irons.”

[C7-19 | source PDF 179–180]
This last observation, taken generally, is very sound and has often been repeated. The explanation of the flames from the two pyres also seems plausible to me. But I do not understand so well how Séthos crossed the blazing grating. Whether he walked upon or between burning irons, the route must still have been scorching and very difficult to follow. If the diamond shapes left scarcely enough room between them for a foot, that space must have been intensely heated by the emission of the surrounding caloric. During the time needed to place a foot carefully in these close-fitting openings, however nimble one might be, it would have shriveled in the midst of those burning surroundings. And what dexterity it would take to avoid touching even one of the bars! Did the priests therefore admit to initiation only those street acrobats who dance among several dozen eggs without breaking a single one? The fearlessness of an initiate not guided by faith would have seemed sheer absurdity. To believe sincerely that the priests had the power to make fire harmless, and to demonstrate that trust by showing, without hesitation, the courage to attempt the trial: according to the most reasonable inference, that is what was demanded of the candidate. We are therefore left to suppose that the priests of Egypt really possessed preparations against burning, as have been possessed among all peoples, and even in France during the centuries of ordeals by red-hot iron, boiling water and molten lead.

[C7-20 | source PDF 180–181]
On emerging from the trial by fire, the candidate found before him a canal of great extent, lit only by the remains of the pyre, whose flames were sinking lower and lower. At once he stripped off his clothes, placed his lamp on his head and swam through darkness dispelled only in a small circle by the lamp’s glow. It was a sinister light, more likely to increase his terror than diminish it, for he was utterly alone amid the deep waters and the continual crash of waterfalls around him, their sound magnified by a resonant vault. Before the flames died out, he had time to glimpse beneath an arch at the end of the canal a long flight of steps, the highest lost in darkness. It was there that he came ashore.

[C7-21 | source PDF 181–182]
The trial by air awaited him at the top of these steps. On climbing them, he came to a landing, a kind of drawbridge spanning the gap between the last step and a double door of ivory that no human strength could open. The walls on either side were bronze and supported the hubs of two wheels of the same material, only half of which projected. As soon as the candidate laid his hand on a ring fixed in the door’s lintel, the drawbridge began to rise at the end nearest the door. He had only two choices: regain the steps and retreat, against the prescribed rule, or cling to the rings. But the lintel itself also rose, with the candidate hanging from it. The lamp slid down the drawbridge and soon overturned, leaving him without light amid the dreadful noise made by the two wheels. It was such that even the boldest man could not help believing that a hundred machines of iron or bronze were crashing to pieces upon him. This movement, which lasted nearly a minute, raised the candidate to the height of a quarter-circle. Then, in a carefully controlled fall, he dropped with the lintel and found himself back where the machine had taken him up. The doors now opened of themselves, and he entered a place lit by brilliant daylight or by a multitude of lamps equaling the light of day.

[Original illustration: plate-iv-initiation-trials.png]
Original plate: “Trial by Fire”; “Introduction of the Initiate”; “Trial by Air”; “Trial by Water.” Robertson states that he followed the description in the Abbé Terrasson’s novel Séthos when designing his engravings. Click to inspect the original at full size.

[C7-22 | source PDF 182–186]
Such are the trials represented in the accompanying plate. It was in these same underground chambers that ancient phantasmagoria originated; at least the manner in which the future was revealed there to those who came for counsel seems to confirm this conjecture. They were shown shades in the Elysian Fields, and future events were presented before them in dramatic scenes. Sunlight and the radiance of the moon and stars underwent modifications different from those found in nature. These differences can readily be explained by the deep space through which the sun’s rays passed to reach the underground chambers. It is also believed that the roles were filled by actual actors and the shades represented by real bodies. Yet however prepared the visitors were beforehand for illusions, it may be harder to pass off real objects as mere appearances than to give images the look and outward form of real people. How can we suppose that men so interested in inventing ways to deceive the eye, so careful to collect them, possessed of the art of representing objects in color, and acquainted with the effects of reflection and the magnifying power of optical glass, neither sought nor succeeded in producing through them effects whose secret chance must have revealed to them a hundred times a day? The frequent conjurations and apparitions later seen throughout Greece and in Rome leave little doubt about the nature of these wonders. I do not imagine that the effects were exactly like those we see today, or created by perfectly identical processes. We should also observe that the illusionists usually dealt with only a very small number of people, and most often with a single person absorbed in the grief or pleasure anticipated from the sight of the phantom. If an apparition took place before a multitude, it passed quickly and struck their minds with such astonishment and terror that their first impulse must have been to cover their faces. Besides, since no element of physics was then known except to those who possessed it under the seal of terrible oaths, the illusions could be crude without failing in their purpose. Nevertheless, let us admit that our interpretation of the means then used to obtain such results rests more on conjecture and reasoned analogies than on proof, or even on traces of tradition.

[C7-23 | source PDF 186–187]
Monsieur Salverte has shown that all the wonders of antiquity can be satisfactorily accounted for by the present resources of chemistry, physics, mechanics, astronomy and natural history. To show now that these wonders arose not merely from the same sources, which seems indisputable, but from the use of the same artifices, would require a work no less extensive. Yet we lack documents. We must therefore be content with this general conclusion, the outcome of Monsieur Salverte’s book: what we do by means known today could have been done by means known in the past; and in every discussion of supposedly supernatural historical events, the presumption arising from impossibility henceforth disappears.

[C7-24 | source PDF 187–187]
Monsieur Salverte, reasoning by analogy from effects to causes, believes that phantasmagoria as we know it today existed in former times. He cites the following description by a disciple of the theurgic philosophers: “In a manifestation that must not be divulged … there appears on the temple wall a mass of light that at first seems very distant. It changes, as though contracting, into a face evidently divine and supernatural, severe in aspect yet mingled with gentleness, and very beautiful to behold. According to the teachings of a mysterious religion, the Alexandrians honor it as Osiris and Adonis.” If I had to describe a modern phantasmagoria, Monsieur Salverte adds, would I express myself differently?

[C7-25 | source PDF 187–188]
From what I have said, I am not far from sharing that opinion. But this last instance, presented in isolation, seems less conclusive to me than it does to the author. I have observed that an imperfect illusion, a distant semblance, could suffice for minds already disposed to believe, ignorant of the rudiments of physics, suddenly seized by fear and turning their eyes away from its object. Clearly, no very active imagination would be needed to devise more than one way of producing, rather crudely, the effect just described without resorting to the processes used in our own day.

[C7-26 | source PDF 188–188]
Have we not seen the shadow of a chimney trace the figure of Louis XVI so strikingly that it drew a great crowd every day to the garden of the Palais-Royal? It was not a chimney’s shadow they came to see: word had spread among the multitude that the shade of Louis XVI came each day to show itself to the Parisians. A police commissioner, followed by a few masons, had to put an end to this apparition and made it vanish before the astonished spectators. How little weight, then, should we give to the account of an isolated event from a time before printing existed!

[C7-27 | source PDF 188–189]
Besides, ancient times, like ages closer to our own, like all those that preceded the discovery of printing, were ages of gross credulity. Why should we now be surprised that oracles could retain credit, influence and the power to dispose, so to speak, of the destiny of states for so many years? Certainly the priests of these temples resorted to all kinds of fraud and artifice, which often succeeded and often failed. But even supposing they were sometimes discovered, there was no means of publicizing them, and it was hardly prudent to let it be thought that one had discovered them. Not only must the masters of the oracular temples have had confidants in the various neighboring towns, but the entire territory in which the temples stood was devoted to the priests, since the inhabitants owed their livelihood, wealth and standing to them alone. Thus, whether one entered the territory of Delphi, for example, or prepared to leave it, almost all the visitor’s thoughts and affairs at the moment of arrival or departure had been betrayed and made known to the priests.

[C7-28 | source PDF 189–191]
Did someone arrive to consult the oracle? Before reaching the temple he encountered emissaries of every kind: guides, innkeepers, traveling companions and fellow diners, from whom it was very difficult to keep his secret. The poor no doubt contented themselves with having their fortunes told at crossroads, while the rich always traveled with a retinue, some of whom necessarily knew the purpose of the journey. Moreover, the oracle allowed itself all the time it needed to become informed, and it was far from speaking every day. Did it not have favorable or unfavorable auguries and readings of entrails at its disposal, repeated expiations and ablutions, auspicious and inauspicious days? During these delays, unless they wished to die of boredom, the visitors had to converse, unwittingly revealing a host of small details about their private lives and relationships of every kind. They also used the time to visit the monuments, statues and offerings of all sorts that filled the temple’s surroundings. Their guides described these objects in ways calculated to produce the desired impression. Here they recalled a punishment inflicted by the god on the indiscreet, the impious or the miserly; elsewhere, the most sumptuous gifts testified to the gratitude of great personages toward the deity. Lessons of this kind were doubtless repeated at every step. Meanwhile, one was obliged to sacrifice a great many victims until an inspection of their entrails yielded perfectly favorable auspices. This finally happened when the priests considered themselves sufficiently informed or suitably feasted at the visitors’ expense. For the latter were compelled to keep open table for a crowd of temple ministers, and the more pleasure they took in eating the victims sacrificed by the unfortunate petitioner, the less haste they made to find the intestines favorable. Athenaeus even tells a rather amusing story of this kind:

[C7-29 | source PDF 191–192]
“After a long voyage, some sailors landed safely, and their first concern was to offer a kid in thanks to the gods. The kid was lean and scrawny. The priests presiding at the sacrifice, noticing how little flesh it carried, correctly judged that it would not provide them with a splendid meal. The sacrificer slaughtered it, and while the sailors, following custom, examined the liver with the greatest attention, he deftly removed the kidney and threw it into a hole. What became of the sailors when they saw that the victim lacked a kidney! What a prodigy to signify the god’s disapproval! They hastened to sacrifice another victim, and their terror reached its height: this time they found the heart missing. Frightened out of their wits, they tried again with a third lamb, finer than the second. It pleased the deity, for all its internal parts were found in excellent condition, and its roasted flesh must have been succulent.”

[C7-30 | source PDF 192–193]
When, after these delays had been so usefully employed, they deigned to admit the suppliant near the sanctuary, they first took care to daze him with an infernal noise of trumpets and other resounding instruments, and an imitation of crashing thunder. Aromatic vapors intoxicated him, and at last he found himself before the Pythia. Good God, what a woman! Bristling hair, eyes starting from their sockets, foaming lips, contortions of every kind, and cries resembling howls: these were the sights and sounds that struck the visitor. The priestess smashed every vessel and utensil within reach and seemed ready to spring at everything around her. The visitor was therefore no more inclined to approach this fury than we are to remain near someone suffering from rabies. This device always relieved the priestess of the need to utter intelligible sentences. Indeed, confused words and inarticulate sounds made up all her replies. The priests collected them, withdrew to deliberate in a place inaccessible to the uninitiated, and interpreted them according to the information they had obtained. In the very rare cases where they had failed to acquire precise information, they had only to resort to tangled answers with double meanings adaptable to every outcome. Would it not have been impious for mere mortals to demand that the deity speak as simply and clearly as they did?

[C7-31 | source PDF 193–194]
As for the results, either they agreed with the predictions, in which case the magnificence of the gifts and the publicity given to these displays of gratitude increased the oracle’s credit, or they contradicted the deity’s promises. In the latter cases, let us first observe that no one likes to proclaim that he has been taken for a fool; and if someone had enough sense to recognize the priests’ deception, he must also have been clear-sighted enough to appreciate the dangers of indiscretion. For both reasons, he kept silent. Moreover, we must remember that those consulting the oracle submitted their questions in writing, and that these remained in the temples’ archives, giving their ministers valuable documents concerning the ambitious or culpable designs of the cities’ leading inhabitants. Through them, kings and princes were informed of dangers threatening their persons, thrones or countries. The oracles, which they doubtless controlled, also offered them the most powerful means of influence at a time when religious terrors alone stood in for enlightenment, which was so little diffused and could spread only so slowly from one person to another. Kings and great men thus possessed in the oracles instruments of policing and government. These were the causes of their long duration and otherwise inexplicable power in Egypt, Greece and Rome.

[C7-32 | source PDF 194–195]
Let us observe, however, that phantasmagorical effects were employed less in Greece than in the other two countries. Yet on every page of Roman authors we find the use of magic, although no surviving trace has revealed its methods to us. It is perhaps surprising that the discovery of Herculaneum, allowing us, so to speak, to catch the whole domestic and religious life of Italy’s ancient inhabitants in the act, has provided no indication of so essential a part of their customs.

Editorial record

The Egyptian initiation account explicitly draws on the Abbé Terrasson’s novel Séthos. The plate is Robertson’s historical illustration, not an ancient Egyptian artifact or an independently verified reconstruction. His later admission that the proposed ancient techniques rest on conjecture and analogy is retained.

The two Latin lines on printed p.150 are translated into English here; their Latin wording and two-line form remain in the source comparison. The translation favors meaning rather than meter.

The source page between 152 and 154 is printed 253 (PDF 173). Its text continues normally, so it is indexed as sequence p.153; no text is missing at this point. All 31 text pages, the inserted plate and its blank verso were inspected.

Robertson’s judgments about religion, rural education and ancient priesthoods are translated as his views. His claims about galvanism in 1794, the Migné cross, the chimney shadow and protection against burns have not been independently verified. Historical accounts and conjectures are not presented here as modern factual conclusions.

The source switches from a kid (young goat) to a lamb in the story attributed to Athenaeus; the translation preserves that change. It also retains the unusual phrase “damned souls from purgatory.” The extended ellipsis within the description quoted through Salverte is printed in the source.

A nome is an Egyptian district. Caloric is retained as the source’s historical term for heat. Historical feet and leagues are not converted to modern units. The spellings Midorge and Fourrier follow this text, as does Kircher here, where the previous chapter used Kirker. The duplicated syllable in the printed vé-véritable on p.155 is retained in French comparison and rendered simply as “true” in English.

Chapter VIII

Freemasonry. Some appearances of phantasmagoria in the ninth century. The shade of Louis XVI. Grundler’s specters. Apparitions by Cagliostro, and anecdotes about him.

[C8-01 | source PDF 196–197]
Of that power to perform miracles, acquired in antiquity through secret possession of the occult sciences and mysterious associations intended to sustain priestly dominion, nothing remains in our enlightened age but the Masonic associations, whose purpose is entirely opposed to that of the ancient secret institutions. Indeed, the trials to which a candidate is subjected, and the exaggerated accounts used to frighten the uninitiated, far from concealing any superstitious aim, are intended, so to speak, only to disguise the entrance to true temples of light. But the brethren do not wish to keep that light to themselves, since they continually seek ways to spread it, together with its principles of philanthropy and liberty. Thus, whereas the ancient associations enjoyed the support of governments, modern Freemasonry is at war with them in a great many countries.

[C8-02 | source PDF 197–197]
As for phantasmagoria, Monsieur Eusèbe Salverte believes he can find traces of it toward the middle of our era:

[C8-03 | source PDF 197–198]
“Like other treasures of occult science,” this author says, “the secret of apparitions fell into oblivion through disuse, but was not destroyed. In the ninth century of our era, a father inconsolable over the loss of his son, the emperor Basil the Macedonian, turns to the prayers of a prelate already famous for the gift of miracles. He sees the image of his beloved son, magnificently dressed and mounted on a splendid horse, hurry toward him, throw himself into his arms and disappear. To explain this historical incident, will anyone still venture the crude supposition that a horseman had been stationed there to play the young prince? Would the father, deceived by the resemblance, not have seized him, held him and imprisoned him in his embrace? Would not this man’s existence, betrayed by so remarkable a resemblance, and consequently the falsity of the apparition, have been discovered and exposed by the miracle worker’s enemies? If we compare this event with earlier traditions, and above all with the ancient existence of the Nekromantion, is it not simpler to admit that in our own day phantasmagoria has been rediscovered rather than invented?”

[C8-04 | source PDF 198–199]
The example seems to me very ill chosen for drawing such a conclusion, while the supposition of a planted horseman seems, on the contrary, highly plausible. To begin with, it is not his son’s shade but his living son [C8-N1] that the prelate Santabarem promises to show the emperor Basil. The fulfillment of these promises is long delayed, as always happens when someone is waiting for a favorable opportunity and wants time to prepare his victim’s mind for a successful deception. Finally, one day when the emperor is walking in a forest, he sees a horseman appear in the distance, dressed in clothes glittering with gold. The rider gallops toward him. The emperor sees his son with his own eyes, throws his arms around him [C8-N2] and covers him with kisses [C8-N3]; his son disappears. Then Basil tries to piece together his features; he conjectures, he believes he has seen him [C8-N4]; and his mind remains in the uncertainty of someone trying to persuade himself that a doubtful object was real, setting the testimony of his heart against the objections of his reason. These embraces, these kisses: was it upon the wind that Basil lavished them? They are caresses that attest the presence of a body, not a shade. Besides, how could phantasmagoria be performed in a forest, in broad daylight? For if this apparition had taken place at night, the author would certainly not have failed to say so. And why choose the awkward position of a man on horseback? This horse galloped noiselessly: it too was a shade. That made precisely the shade of a rider on the shade of a horse, and it is impossible not to recall Scarron’s amusing parody:

[C8-05 | source PDF 199–199]
Farther on, beneath the shadow of a rock,
I glimpsed the shadow of a coachman,
Who, holding the shadow of a brush,
Was brushing the shadow of a coach.

[C8-06 | source PDF 199–199]
There seems to me, then, to have been imposture without phantasmagoria in the bishop’s trick upon the emperor Basil.

[C8-07 | source PDF 199–200]
Effects much more likely to be the product of this art appear in the following account, which I owe to Monsieur Aubin, who is otherwise entirely unknown to me. His letter to the Journal de Paris, dated 4 Pluviôse, Year VII, in the early months of my establishment, contains praises I cannot claim to deserve. Yet I may at least take pride in having received these flattering marks of indulgence from a learned man:

[C8-08 | source PDF 200–200]
To the Editors of the Journal de Paris.

[C8-09 | source PDF 200–200]
“Citizens, there is nothing new under the sun, and still less in the dark. I am going to prove it to you in connection with phantasmagoria.

[C8-10 | source PDF 200–201]
“First I must also say a word about the talents of our contemporary, the modern phantasmagorist. Robertson is a physicist, mechanic, painter and optician. He is everything required to produce the greatest effects upon the imagination through the senses, except what he does not wish to be: a magician or necromancer in an age when every illusion has vanished before human reason, perfected by the exact sciences. Without charlatanism he presents discoveries that would have had him burned alive a few hundred years ago, even as he protested that he was no sorcerer. But these discoveries, which are indeed his own and which I have no wish to dispute, since he possesses the modesty of true merit that distinguishes a learned man from a charlatan, are not new. This will be seen from the extract I ask you to insert in your journal, from a journey through Germany made around the middle of the last century by Charles Patin, worthy heir to the celebrated Guy Patin, who calls him ‘my son Carolus’ in his lively letters, a collection well enough known. Unfortunately people now read only new books, from which they learn everything much as Monsieur de Pourceaugnac learned law from novels. Few readers know the book by Charles Patin the younger that I am citing: Historical and Curious Accounts of Travels in Germany, England, Holland, Bohemia, Switzerland, etc., etc., printed by Pierre Mortier in Amsterdam in 1695.

[C8-11 | source PDF 201–201]
“The passage is in the section on Nuremberg, on page 190 of these accounts. I shall simply transcribe the anecdote here, to spare your readers the trouble of looking for it. Here it is:

[C8-12 | source PDF 201–201]
‘Just a word about a certain Monsieur Grundler. He is a monk who has come, he says, to reform himself according to the morality of Doctor Luther.

[C8-13 | source PDF 201–203]
‘To justify his change to me by comparing the party he is abandoning with the one he embraces, he would need as much power over reason as he has over the eyes, which he makes see what he wishes and as he wishes. For he has all the knowledge one could possess of the secrets of optics. This is the art that can place half the world in a point, that has found the means of drawing visual echoes from crystal and bringing the most distant objects close, through reproductions of images and correspondences of views that open up, within the narrowest spaces, distances beyond the reach of sight. In short, it is that deceptive art which plays tricks upon our eyes and, with ruler and compass, throws all our senses out of order. Our man goes further still: he moves shadows as he pleases, without help from the underworld. You have sometimes heard of that spherical glass which receives distant objects through a thread of light and, turning in the darkness, imprints them there and makes them follow its movement. Real phantoms and specters have no stronger air of the other world. With all due respect to Monsieur Grundler, my esteem for his knowledge did not take away my fear. I thought there had never been a greater magician in the world. I saw paradise, I saw hell, I saw specters. I have some fortitude, but would gladly have given half of it to save the other half. All this disappeared and gave way to spectacles of another kind. In an instant I saw the air filled with birds of every sort, much as they are painted around Orpheus. In the turn of a hand I was shown a village wedding so naturally that I imagined myself among the guests, a magnificent palace, and a tournament of tilting at the ring. Its heroes were the gods worshiped by antiquity. It was a pleasure to see Momus there, mounted on a Barbary horse, joining the satyrs in mocking Jupiter, who had shown so little skill in such fine company, etc.’

[C8-14 | source PDF 203–203]
“There, citizens, are all the wonders being revived, or proposed for revival, by the enchanting physicist whom I admire, and at whose performances one cannot fail to be greatly entertained while learning no longer to fear ghosts.

[C8-15 | source PDF 203–203]
“Greetings: Aubin.”

[C8-16 | source PDF 203–205]
Here again we see no trace of the methods used to obtain these effects. After this I find no further attempts at apparitions until the time of the celebrated Cagliostro. Although this famous man’s magical works are of fairly recent date, we are entirely ignorant of how he performed them. His miracles of this kind were few, moreover, and I can cite only two examples. But first I shall set down some details about this singular man that I had occasion to gather on my travels. During my stay in Vienna I was on friendly terms with Monsieur d’Hannibal, a gentleman who had known Cagliostro well in Strasbourg. Cagliostro was a fairly frequent visitor at the home of Monsieur Mathieu Béguin, counselor to the king and judge-warden of the Strasbourg mint, Monsieur d’Hannibal’s uncle. He had some knowledge of medicine and attended Monsieur Lacroix, another uncle of Monsieur d’Hannibal, during a fairly serious illness. It was therefore at these two uncles’ homes, and also at that of Baron de Zucmantel, lord of Osthoffen, that Monsieur d’Hannibal had opportunities to know him well. Madame de Frank, whose husband was a banker in Strasbourg, nevertheless saw him sometimes in secret: her husband had refused to receive Cagliostro, who had been recommended to him but of whom he had heard unfavorable reports. This lady, enthusiastic about Cagliostro’s talents, also owed him a cure. She gave me much the same details as Monsieur d’Hannibal. Here they are:

[C8-17 | source PDF 205–206]
“Cagliostro’s entire life, as is well known, was nothing but a succession of tricks. His whole history is stamped with a truly farcical air of the marvelous, if we set the solemnity of his stories and the credulity of his listeners beside the enlightenment of the age. Not a word of truth could ever be drawn from his mouth about anything concerning himself. Women disguise their age; he disguised his too, but in a very different manner. One day, for example, he had stopped in a gallery before a painting of Jesus Christ on the cross. For a long time he contemplated it in religious silence, his gaze fixed upon the Savior’s face. Suddenly great tears were seen running down his cheeks. It was thought that he was feigning such close attention to the picture to conceal some private sorrow. He was questioned with sympathy and delicacy. ‘Alas!’ he replied sadly, ‘the only cause of my tears is before your eyes: the death of this great moralist, a man so upright, so gentle, so pleasant a companion, to whom I owed such happy moments.’ ‘Whom are you talking about?’ someone asked. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he answered with the utmost gravity. ‘I knew him very well.’”

[C8-18 | source PDF 206–206]
The effrontery was immense: an assertion so positive, made with such assurance, could not be turned into a joke without causing a scene. Monsieur d’Hannibal wished to know what the servant of such a master must think, rightly imagining that Mahomet had not chosen Séide at random. On meeting the servant, he therefore asked how long he had been in Cagliostro’s service, and how old he supposed his master to be. “How old is my master?” the valet replied. “I could not tell you, for I do not know. I have always known him as you see him, neither younger nor older. Yet I have served him for quite a long time, since I entered his service on the very day Caesar was assassinated in Rome.” Does one not seem to see one of those stage valets upon whom one is tempted to avenge oneself with a cane for the impertinence one must endure from their masters, whom they imitate so brazenly?

[C8-19 | source PDF 206–208]
On another occasion Monsieur d’Hannibal found an opportunity to pay Cagliostro some flattering compliments on his wife. Cagliostro immediately told him this story: “One day I was resting in Egypt before one of the great pyramids. I am fairly familiar with the hieroglyphic language. Looking about me, I noticed among the carvings on the stones a rooster holding a hammer, poised to strike. I understood at once that I must be vigilant and that I would be married. What I had to do was easy to guess: I struck that same stone with a hammer. The stone yielded of its own accord, moved aside and revealed an opening through which I did not hesitate to enter. The journey was long and fairly arduous. The darkness was complete, and I dragged myself along on my back until, reaching a steep slope, I let myself slide down. I arrived on a level space and found myself facing a door, which I opened easily. A narrow path soon led me into an enchanted garden. With what delight I wandered along its paths! At the far end, a broad expanse of clear water barred my way. Yet in its center I could see a little island of the most inviting appearance, which seemed inhabited. But how was I to reach it? At first I had not noticed a little boat moored to the shore, seemingly waiting there for me. I jumped in, and a few strokes of the oars brought me across. A venerable old man came to meet me, bade me welcome, took me by the hand and led me to his dwelling. As soon as we entered he introduced me to a charming young woman, his daughter. You know that young woman: she is Madame Cagliostro.”

[C8-20 | source PDF 208–208]
Monsieur d’Hannibal maintains that he told all this with a gravity that commanded belief. Besides, people scarcely dared laugh at all these impertinences. On every wall in Strasbourg could be read a placard in which Louis XVI declared that anyone who offended Cagliostro would be regarded as guilty of lèse-majesté. In Vienna they had acted very differently, allowing him to remain in the city no longer than twenty-four hours.

[C8-21 | source PDF 208–208]
Before coming to Paris, he thought it necessary to establish his standing and reputation through good works, and had it announced in Strasbourg that he would cure all poor people free of charge. Several of his cures succeeded. And since it happens often enough that the boldness of unorthodox practice has an effect where medicine has exhausted its resources, he had the good fortune to snatch from death a great nobleman whom the doctors had given up. This stay in Strasbourg in 1780 aroused extraordinary enthusiasm for him.

[C8-22 | source PDF 209–209]
His arrival in Paris caused a sensation. He lodged on the Rue Saint-Gilles in the Marais, at the home of the Marquis Delaunay, where Cardinal de Rohan came to see him; for, as everyone knows, his two chief protectors were that cardinal and Monsieur de Flammarens. [C8-N5]

[C8-23 | source PDF 210–210]
This extraordinary man became a mere mortal on occasions when human frailty can hardly help betraying itself. While serving at table, a clumsy servant stained a very fine coat worn by the illustrious host. The presence of a large company could not restrain his outburst of anger. He berated the servant violently and made a terrible scene, such as a man who possessed only that one coat would not have dared risk. Everyone was left astonished. It was a great failure of judgment in a man endowed with such marvelous secrets, with the powder of projection, the quintessence of the stars, potable gold and the philosopher’s stone at his disposal.

[C8-24 | source PDF 210–210]
Cagliostro accepted no money or payment for his work, but his confidential secretary, Monsieur Roy, received presents from every hand, apparently sold them and shared the proceeds. Gifts of food in particular reached the cook in great abundance, and the table was always plentifully and exquisitely supplied.

[C8-25 | source PDF 210–212]
By these roundabout means alchemy provided for the great wonder worker’s needs. One should not suppose that his dupes were drawn from ordinary people and the ignorant classes. His successes prove that even in the most enlightened ages, blindness and credulity can become the lot of great noblemen. He persuaded Prince de Rohan to join in his alchemical labors. This disease of wanting to make gold, and thus obtain an inexhaustible source of wealth without effort or work, has afflicted a great many minds for a very long time; even today, when it occurs only sporadically, there are still outbreaks. At least thirty alchemists have come to me at different times, begging me to contribute funds to their enterprise so that we might then boil gold by the cauldronful. Less than six months ago I had in my hands a lengthy account of a discovery just as precious; yet all the wretches who have made it were badly in need of a few small coins from it. In vain I pointed out that gold is a simple substance, formed of a single metallic element, namely gold; that only gold could be gold; and that where no mixture exists, every combination is absurd. These people seem suddenly to lose their understanding in order to resist so palpable an argument. Cagliostro understood it very well, and was too enlightened to search seriously for what he knew could not be found. He could deceive his converts with combinations, alloys, amalgams and fusions of every kind. But when he wished to make it seem that a positive result had been achieved, he took care to place among the substances he used the actual thing that was to appear as the product of the operation. Thus, after hollowing out pieces of charcoal and enclosing gold dust in them, he summoned Cardinal de Rohan and even left him the honor of blowing the fire… What a marvel! Gold was seen gleaming among the liquefied materials… Real gold! All that remained was to separate it from its alloy and refine it. This was accomplished just as if it had been ordinary gold; indeed, it proved so like the latter that six teaspoons were made from it. [C8-N6]

[C8-26 | source PDF 212–213]
The prelate’s credulity was carried further still. Cagliostro persuaded him that he would make the shade of his mistress pass before his eyes. Once such an idea has taken hold of a lover’s imagination, one can readily understand how importunate he becomes, and what influence may be gained over his mind. Cagliostro had already granted the same favor in Warsaw to Prince Adam Poninski. Through the magician’s power, this prince had once more seen the beloved image of his mistress Képinska, dead for several years, and had lavished gold upon the author of so sweet an enchantment. 

[C8-27 | source PDF 213–214]
Cardinal de Rohan did not enjoy it as promptly as he had hoped. Asked for a hundred times, the long-awaited moment was a hundred times postponed. The preparations were complete: this new Orpheus, coming to reclaim his Eurydice only to lose her at once, watched in anguish for the fleeting instant when the insubstantial shade would flutter into view… Suddenly Cagliostro, armed with his magic wand, would postpone the sweet illusion, declaring that something was happening in nature that opposed the power of his art; that the day of the moon was unfavorable; that some great crime must have been committed that day. Only five or six spectators were admitted to a small room hung entirely in black, to which Cagliostro summoned them several times without managing to produce the apparition. Perhaps he was waiting for an effect of light that the state of the sky did not provide. They were spaced so far apart that they could not communicate their impressions to one another. At last the wonder took place. Cagliostro came to announce that the auspices seemed favorable and he hoped to succeed. But he enjoined the most reverent silence and the greatest restraint. He forbade sneezing and any expression of satisfaction or disapproval. Before the cardinal’s spellbound gaze, a barely sketched figure began to appear upon the wall and quickly dissolved. He had only time to cry out and feel a surge of passion whose impression, heightened by his memories, must have remained engraved upon his soul for a long time. I am entirely ignorant of the means Cagliostro employed. But if I am to believe a witness to this scene, which had only four or five witnesses in all, and a very trustworthy witness at that, the cardinal owed far more to his imagination than to the necromancer’s wand.

[C8-28 | source PDF 214–215]
Cagliostro’s imprisonment after he became implicated in the affair of the necklace, in which the Duke de Rohan played so well-known a role, does not concern my subject. His captivity and death in the Castel Sant’Angelo were the final acts of the Holy Roman Inquisition. Freemasonry was the pretext for his condemnation. More or less absurd rumors had been spread about him. It was claimed, for example, that he had planned to set fire to Rome. It was also said that he had prophesied that Pius VII would be the last pope and that after his death the Roman Church would be stripped of its possessions. A few days after his arrest, Cagliostro asked for three things: a bloodletting, a cloak and a fire. A member of the Holy Office said that there was all the more reason to give him his cloak since it was impossible to allow him a fire, and that there was no objection to the bloodletting, since he allowed himself the same treatment. A few months after his condemnation, the part of the sentence ordering his papers, books and effects to be consigned to the flames was carried out. The superstitious people of Rome, who would have prostrated themselves before a single miracle of the magician Cagliostro, raised fanatical cries of joy at the sight of this auto-da-fé.

[C8-29 | source PDF 215–216]
The true reasons for this celebrated man’s condemnation to perpetual imprisonment are still unknown. Politics played no part in it. The charge of Freemasonry is as odious as it is absurd. Let us rather believe that his alchemical practices and the reports of his conjurations seemed harmful to faith in the miracles of Christianity, and that the members of the Holy Office plied their priestly trade.

[C8-30 | source PDF 216–216]
As for the methods of his apparitions, one must be surprised that they were never disclosed and that he managed to keep them so secret. Perhaps this can be explained only by the care taken in Rome to destroy by fire everything that had belonged to him.

Original notes

[C8-N1 | source PDF 198–198]
To show him alive.

[C8-N2 | source PDF 198–198]
Having embraced him.

[C8-N3 | source PDF 198–198]
He kissed him.

[C8-N4 | source PDF 198–198]
He supposed that he had seen him and that he had not been deceived.

[C8-N5 | source PDF 209–209]
Cagliostro’s residence on the Rue Saint-Claude, near the boulevard, became something like an annex to the capital’s hospitals. Every patient abandoned by the doctors was brought before the learned foreigner. He effected numerous cures and set the entire learned medical profession against him. Two young students of surgery, urged on by their teachers, decided to test the master’s knowledge. Pretending to suffer from an incurable disease whose symptoms eluded medical investigation, one of them presented himself to Cagliostro. The latter guessed the trick and, through skillful conversation, saw that his visitor had some knowledge of the healing art. Turning to the young man who had accompanied the patient, he said: “I shall keep this gentleman here and answer for his health for sixteen days. During that time he will take sixteen ounces of food in sixteen separate meals.” At these words the patient jumped in alarm, refusing such a regimen, worse than death. “But what, then, is my illness?” he asked Cagliostro, continuing his imposture. The physician answered by handing him a paper on which he had just written. The young man glanced at the inscription and read: “An excess of bile among the gentlemen of the Faculty.” The students were disconcerted. Cagliostro put them at their ease, had them breakfast with him and made converts of them. Both subsequently became the Italian count’s most zealous defenders. (Memoirs of an Octogenarian.)

[C8-N6 | source PDF 212–212]
The Hanoverian privy councilor Hermbstadt had the following published in Hanover: “Sixteen ounces of virgin platinum, seven ounces of copper and one ounce of pure zinc, placed together in a crucible and covered with powdered charcoal, replace gold, once melted into a single compact mass, not only in color but also in specific gravity, density and ductility.”

Editorial record

The chapter synopsis names the shade of Louis XVI, but the chapter body contains no such episode. Both the synopsis and the complete body are retained as printed. All twenty-one printed pages are present.

The four Greek author notes supporting the Basil narrative are translated and retained in source comparison. In note4 the last printed verb appears as πεπλεύηται; the English provisionally reads it as the likely intended πεπλάνηται, “has been deceived.” A crop of the original four notes is linked beside that note so the printed form remains available. This is an explicit textual uncertainty, not a silently corrected source.

Scarron’s four-line parody is translated for meaning, preserving the repeated word “shadow” and the line count rather than supplying new rhymes. Nested quotation marks in Aubin’s letter distinguish his own prose from the passage he attributes to Charles Patin.

The account retains the source’s assertions about Cagliostro’s cures, royal protection, imprisonment and death, the Inquisition and alchemy; they are historical claims by Robertson and his informants, not independently established facts. The body gives Rue Saint-Gilles while the quoted author note gives Rue Saint-Claude. Both readings are retained. The account also shifts from five or six spectators to four or five witnesses; those numbers are preserved.

Basile and Bazile are rendered consistently as Basil. Other personal names follow the source. The Republican date 4 Pluviôse, Year VII is preserved without conversion. “Powder of projection,” “potable gold” and “philosopher’s stone” retain the alchemical vocabulary. The alloy quantities in the original note remain sixteen, seven and one ounces, without modern conversion. The pronoun in the Holy Office member’s remark on bloodletting is ambiguous; the English retains the reference to allowing oneself the treatment.

Chapter IX

My first experiments in phantasmagoria. The Abbé Chappe. I persuade him to make the telegraph known. The clumsy helper. My debut at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier. The effect of the glass harmonica. Indiscretion in the dark. Poultier’s article. A request for Louis XVI’s apparition. Specters under official seal. My departure for Bordeaux. Monsieur Cazalès attacks and is defeated. A Gascon epigram. I leave the ground.

[C9-01 | source PDF 217–218]
The knowledge I had gained from studying physics, and the phenomena of light in particular, had long since transformed my extravagant notions of sorcery into more reasonable investigations of fantastic effects. The desire to create artificial phantoms had succeeded the hope of finding myself among a whole chapter of genuine devils. Nevertheless, I must confess that chance gave me my first ideas for phantasmagoria. I had a particular liking for experiments with the solar microscope, so much so that in Paris, when Madame Chevalier left the house on the Rue de Provence, I very nearly became involved with the landlord in one of those odd lawsuits that enliven hearings before justices of the peace. I had bored holes in every door to let the solar spectrum through. The landlord, who had supplied us with solid doors, said he did not want them returned as openwork. This little dispute was settled. It was during one of these experiments in Liège that my brother’s hand, as he helped me from outside, appeared in greatly enlarged proportions upon the wall. My first experiments with shadows and specters date from that chance observation.

[C9-02 | source PDF 218–218]
As early as 1784 I had added improvements to Kirker’s lantern that enabled me, after a fashion, to make shadows hobble along before my good friend Monsieur Villette and a few people in our intimate circle. Their encouragement led me to improve my methods from day to day. Day by day, too, the circle of initiates grew. As word of these apparitions, imperfect though they were, spread more widely, I soon had large gatherings. Indeed, I must say that the visit with which the burgomasters honored one of my performances, mentioned earlier, was due no less to these experiments in phantasmagoria than to my demonstrations of physics.

[C9-03 | source PDF 218–219]
On my return to Paris, as soon as the ambitious ideas inspired by my Archimedes’ mirror had vanished, I began thinking again about ways of bringing my catoptric methods to greater perfection. I surrounded myself with a host of works: Father Kircker’s Magia lucis et ombræ; Gaspard Schott’s Magia optica and Magia universalis Naturæ et Artis; Naturich Magie von Viegleb; and Joannis Zann pro explicatione oculi artificialis. I consulted the Dioptrique oculaire of Father Chérubin of Orléans, Eckartshausen’s book and still others. But all were too diffuse, more likely to lead me astray than to guide me. After long, laborious and tedious reading, I found myself thrown back upon my own resources and obliged to make continual trials, possible only at night. The object of my research at that time was to obtain a great intensity of light concentrated upon a surface whose smallest diameter would be five inches and its largest eight feet; then to find an apparatus for representing the optical image of opaque bodies by artificial light. Monsieur Charles had almost discouraged me in this work by saying that the Duke de Chaulnes and he had spent a great deal of time and money on it without any success.

[C9-04 | source PDF 219–222]
Moreover, I had undertaken these studies only from curiosity and a desire to learn. My early success in painting and my liking for that art had always made me regard it as my sole means of acquiring fortune and reputation. But fate, or rather the Abbé Chappe, decided otherwise. I saw this abbé frequently at the time: a man of learning, wit and taste, yet addicted to a kind of intemperance that these qualities ought always to exclude. He continually urged me to make my experiments public under my own name. The government’s inquisitorial spirit made me fear some danger from such publicity. Yet I saw none in presenting to the revolutionary government the discovery of the telegraph, whose secret he had possessed for two years. He, on the contrary, saw danger in that step and none in the one that concerned me. Thus fear of the responsibility that might fall upon his head delayed for more than two years the use of the telegraph, that mechanism so simple, ingenious and sublime when one considers its purpose and results! Verse and prose have celebrated nature’s precious gift of communicating our feelings through speech, and that admirable invention which must have followed so closely upon the formation of the first societies: the art of speaking through signs impressed upon tree bark, clay, metals, paper, even sand! What honors, then, are also owed to the art of carrying our thoughts through the air to the remotest distances, with a speed to which the bird’s flight, the arrow’s swiftness, the passage of sound and the breath of the winds offer no comparison! The art of traversing, through reciprocal communications, the vastest country in a few minutes, the Old World in less than a few hours, and the whole globe in less than a day, were it not for the ocean’s immense barrier! The Abbé Chappe found the details of this method, or so I have always believed, among the papers of his uncle, known for his journey into the interior of Russia at the order of Empress Catherine. My entreaties and my example finally persuaded him to bring forward this fine invention. I even accompanied him to the bar of the Legislative Body and attended the first trials, held in a garden in Belleville. The Abbé Chappe, whose glory in such a discovery assures him a name forever, met an unhappy end as a consequence of his dissolute habits: he fell into a well which the fumes of wine had prevented him from seeing, and perished there. I must pay tribute to the zeal that his friendship led him to show me for so long. Several times he pressed me to accept an honorable post in the management of the telegraph lines. But the government of the day’s summary methods, and my fairly natural wish to die in my bed when I could no longer do otherwise, left me insufficiently reassured to yield to ambition.

[C9-05 | source PDF 222–223]
I therefore decided to give public performances of my experiments. The first were to take place in the physics cabinet of a certain Monsieur Béer. This Béer had held a subordinate position first with the Duke d’Albaret, then with Count Papillon Laferté, father of the man who was intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs under Charles X. His aspirations rose, and he took up turning on a lathe, then dealing in curiosities and old objects, and finally attending physics lectures. I met him at Monsieur Charles’s course. Charles called him “the clumsy helper.” Indeed, he was almost invariably quick to guess what objects were needed, offer them obligingly and break them unintentionally. Monsieur Charles laughed a great deal when telling us of an idea Béer’s intelligence had supplied in place of one his lack of elementary education prevented him from understanding properly. Instead of “cohesive attraction,” he constantly wrote “pitch-esive attraction,” deriving it from pitch, no doubt on account of the sticky quality of that resinous substance, with which, like everyone else, he had become acquainted at his shoemaker’s. Béer married a woman older than himself, who compensated for the inequality by possessing some property. It was then that he established a physics cabinet on the Rue de Clichy, part of which could be seen on his rooftops. Unfortunately his wife died without making a will, and his brother-in-law dispossessed him of everything he had brought to the marriage, a highly eccentric scholar who owns a fairly long row of buildings that he refuses either to rent or repair. Sheltered in one wing of a house among his books, this wealthy oddity enjoys living free of the worry of taxes, the importunities of tenants and the nuisance of workmen. [C9-N1]

[C9-06 | source PDF 224–224]
As my preparations were nearing completion, his ignorance, coupled with his stinginess, dissuaded me from opening the show in his premises. I applied elsewhere, and my hall opened at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier in the first days of Germinal, Year VI.

[C9-07 | source PDF 224–226]
I think I should quote some passages from the prospectus of sorts with which I announced these performances. The spirit of the times clearly indicated how I should present them. It was, moreover, in keeping with my philosophical ideas, had bold opinions then pushed to extremes not given rise to such deplorable excesses. I took part of the wording of this prospectus from a work entitled Philosophy of Nature, in which the usefulness of the spectacle I intended to offer had already been demonstrated, and its realization virtually demanded in the interests of enlightenment.

[C9-08 | source PDF 226–226]
“Temples,” it said, “mosques, tabernacles and oratories had augurs, magi, sibyls and apparitions. In this respect, let no one imagine that the peoples of the East, the Greeks and the Egyptians, were more credulous than we are. Love of the marvelous belongs to human nature; it belongs to every age and every place. If the peoples of the South had prophetesses, did the peoples of the North not have druids, magicians, sorcerers and miracles?

[C9-09 | source PDF 226–227]
“As long as the thick veil remains that still covers the occult and mysterious science of which the priests of every sect seemed the sole possessors; as long as physics, joining its torch to that of philosophy, fails to illuminate the methods used by the priests of Eleusis, the ministers of Cybele and the magi of Egyptian temples to make invisible beings appear, credulity will always retain weapons with which to defend itself. Man yields only to evidence, which is obtained only through the senses; and what speaks better to all the senses at once than experimental physics? From astonishment to credulity there is only a step. Man would never be astonished if he were always informed. And to destroy a religious prejudice, are the works of ten Rousseaus worth a single fact demonstrated by experiment? [C9-N2]”

[C9-10 | source PDF 227–227]
I concluded with the following reflections:

[C9-11 | source PDF 227–227]
“It is therefore another step forward for the exact sciences, for instruction and for the explanation of several historical events, to be able to lift, before human eyes, one corner of the iron curtain that has concealed the truth for so long. Besides, it is more important than is generally supposed for governments and educators to cure citizens’ minds of the absurd beliefs that dishonor their intelligence, for these terrors born of credulity tend to weaken their observance of the laws of society. A man who trembles at the thought of a shade will hardly fail to shudder at the sight of a burning house containing something dear to him, or a soldier scaling the walls of his country.

[C9-12 | source PDF 228–228]
“There is no government that ought not to encourage the philosophical physicist whose work and moral teaching tend to overthrow the altars of superstition and destroy those ancient prejudices which, renewed from age to age, have so often placed the dagger of fanaticism in human hands.”

[C9-13 | source PDF 228–229]
I soon established myself in the former convent of the Capucines on the Place Vendôme, and shall reserve a complete description of a performance for that point. Let us see, meanwhile, how the public received this entirely new kind of exhibition. The almost sudden appearance of these shades, these specters, these inhabitants of tombs and even of hell itself, among a population so frivolous, so heedless and so changeable in imagination, had an extraordinary effect. The hall was always full, although seats were priced at three and six livres. People of fashion were the first to flock there and, eager for every new sensation, hastened to procure these funeral diversions. To give an idea of how this new spectacle was regarded, I need only quote a few extracts from the newspapers of the time. Readers will find them all the more interesting because they were written by authors of merit. The first I shall cite is by Monsieur Babié de Bercenay.

[C9-14 | source PDF 229–229]
ROBERTSON’S PHANTASMAGORIA

[C9-15 | source PDF 229–229]
“Chemistry has lately made such rapid progress that it is difficult to follow its operations and discuss the immense discoveries it makes every day. To it we owe our knowledge of bodies, and to it we shall also owe our knowledge of the apparition of invisible beings, or of the methods doubtless employed by the priests of Eleusis, the ministers of Cybele and the priests of Egyptian temples in the mysteries of initiation. An obscure metaphysics sought to discourse upon the existence of invisible beings, their nature and their functions. Superstition believed it saw them; tender and melancholy passions assured them absolute dominion over weak souls. Chemistry offers them to our gaze as they are, but no longer with ignorance, fear and folly as guides; still worthy, however, of holding our attention, astonishing the wise and encouraging the physicist.

[C9-16 | source PDF 229–230]
“There has been much joking about the phenomena of phantasmagoria presented by Citizen Robertson. Critics have thought they could assail them with irony and ridicule. But the chemist and the sage have remained silent: the one has seen singular discoveries and experiments whose satisfactory results herald another advance in certain branches of physics; the other, a terrible blow struck at superstition and credulity.

[C9-17 | source PDF 230–230]
“Citizen Robertson’s first experiments impressed us. Difficulties overcome; a thorough study of light and shadow, combined with the means of varying their effects; well-drawn magical tableaux: all deserved the public’s approval. But the author, a true chemist and wise physicist, rejecting the language of charlatans and perhaps too readily renouncing that marvelous quality which has such power over mankind, had not received all the applause he deserved. Taught by experience, he returns to the marvelous: not the kind that abuses words and creates imaginary worlds to terrify weak souls, but the kind that strikes and astonishes, leaving the imagination to search, comment and conjecture.

[C9-18 | source PDF 231–231]
“Phantasmagoria must have had a terrible effect in those vast pyramids where the Chaldean invoked the god of nature and sought to strike terror into the souls of initiates. Those tombs, those deep caverns, that murky darkness, those mournful cries and spectral apparitions must have produced a terrible effect. It would be the same in Citizen Robertson’s workshop if the spectators were not so numerous and the physicist allowed more scope to the imagination. What would be the terror of a spectator alone, suddenly conducted into the room of phantasmagorical experiments, surrounded by images of death, his imagination struck by fear of invisible beings, if he heard the plaintive, funeral tones of the glass harmonica and saw the threatening specter appear! I know that a wise and watchful police authority would prohibit such a spectacle. But if a spectator could place himself in that situation, and despite the crowd around him immerse himself in the mysteries presented, I believe the phantasmagorical shades could surprise and astonish him.

[C9-19 | source PDF 231–232]
“Young beauties, disciples of Epicurus, pupils of pleasure and gaiety, leave Cythera and its smiling groves for a moment; forget Euterpe and Therpsicore for a single day. Come breathe the air of tombs, converse with plaintive Young and gloomy Hervey, and pay your tribute to Anglomania…

[C9-20 | source PDF 232–232]
“The lover of places consecrated to departed spirits, the abandoned mistress, the wife who has lost the object of her love, the sage, the physicist and the chemist will go to admire Citizen Robertson’s experiments, and will be forced to admit that the spectacle he offers the public has something astonishing and marvelous about it.”

[C9-21 | source PDF 232–233]
Some passages in this article show how many precautions I took to prevent anyone from pretending that I wished to exploit public credulity, revive superstition and deceive the ignorant. I did not forget the harmful use Comus and Pinetti had made of their dexterity, and Cagliostro and Mesmer of their knowledge, nor how much they had put the public on its guard against any discovery that seemed to lend itself to the marvelous. I preferred, in a sense, to impair the complete illusion of my experiments rather than let the slightest suspicion of charlatanism or imposture hang over my intentions. One may also observe in the remarks just quoted the improvements that naturally resulted from practice and experience. I had acted all the more wisely in not displaying the full extent of my funeral illusions from the very first performances, since one newspaper thought it proper to point out several unfortunate consequences my spectacle might produce:

[C9-22 | source PDF 233–233]
“Yesterday I paid my tribute of curiosity to phantasmagoria,” Citizen Molin wrote to the Ami des Lois. “I admit that the magic of optics and the dreadful art of specters can scarcely be brought to a more admirable degree. Yet society may have an interest in considering the reflections I submit on the subject. It was first of all the opening of the performance that suggested them to me.

[C9-23 | source PDF 233–234]
“Once the public has entered the most dismal of halls, at the moment the scene is about to open, the sudden extinguishing of the lights plunges you for an hour and a half into darkness as dreadful as it is profound. That is the order of things: one must be unable to see a thing in the imaginary realm of the dead. At once the doors are locked with two turns of the key; and what could be more natural than to lose one’s freedom when seated in a tomb, as if beyond Acheron among the shades?

[C9-24 | source PDF 234–234]
“But with all the proprieties of the invitation, who will guarantee the spectators that indiscreet hands will not seek to wander under cover of the darkness?…

[C9-25 | source PDF 234–235]
“A second reflection is that, for other and still more important reasons, no pregnant woman should be admitted to this spectacle. The thunder, imitated from nature, strikes her delicate senses with such a terrible and sudden crash that she will believe herself struck down. The most hideous specters follow one another with every illusion of reality, advancing as though to throw themselves upon her; she will be frozen with terror and think herself lost. The unexpected sound of a dreadful brazen instrument calls up Death, and in the blink of an eye Death appears in all its horrors. Will not the overly sensitive spectator, with all her senses overturned, pay for her imprudent curiosity at the expense of her unborn child? These most misshapen devils, seeming to compete in the skill and pleasure of frightening her most; these faces contorted into the most horrible grimaces, engraving themselves upon her feeble brain; these voices as loud and fully as frightening as that of the bull of Thalaris; these colossal, disgusting spirits; these skulls flying around her; and all the other dreadful objects that fill her mind with terror: might they not make her another unhappy Leodamia, who died of fright imagining that she saw the shade of her dear Protesilaus?… And what dangerous impressions might this moving, horrible gallery also make upon the children brought there!

[C9-26 | source PDF 235–235]
“I assure Monsieur Robertson that I have not the slightest intention of harming him, since I am his admirer and a willing champion of his unique talent. I am happy to suppose that his fertile imagination will soon find ways to avert these difficulties, possible in my view, though others may think they will never occur.

[C9-27 | source PDF 235–235]
“Signed: Molin.”

[C9-28 | source PDF 235–236]
Of the two difficulties mentioned above, I have never heard that the latter actually occurred. The effect of the apparitions was extraordinary and doubtless found women more impressionable than men. But the terror, greatly diminished by the presence of a large gathering and by the certainty, though sometimes forgotten, that only shadows stood before them, produced no disastrous results. Although several women usually needed smelling salts, only one became truly unwell and suffered a fairly violent nervous attack. The phantoms were not to blame: it was caused solely by the excessively sweet and penetrating tones of the glass harmonica. Imagine, however, the intense emotion this incident aroused in profound darkness, while everyone awaited the specters whose approach a melancholy melody was already announcing!

[C9-29 | source PDF 236–236]
As for the other difficulty, whether the men’s restraint or the ladies’ prudence was extreme, I could cite only one instance, and that occurred at a private performance. Director Barras had had the deputy Malibran reserve the entire hall. He came with a large company, including Joséphine, then the wife of General Bonaparte, Madame Tallien and other ladies. The light had scarcely been extinguished when a woman’s rather excited voice said quite distinctly: “Stop it! Do stop, sir!” The matter was turned into a joke, and no one seemed offended.

[C9-30 | source PDF 237–237]
Among the many articles that helped make phantasmagoria fashionable, I shall quote only one more. Almost entirely imagined, but biting and satirical, it reproduces certain opinions of a time whose smallest historical details seem to arouse interest today. Moreover, it ends with an allusion to an incident that harmed me. Representative Poultier wrote it and inserted it in the Ami des Lois, [C9-N3] of which he was editor. The article carried his full signature. Here it is:

[C9-31 | source PDF 237–237]
PHANTASMAGORIA

[C9-32 | source PDF 237–237]
“A decemvir said that only the dead never returned. Go to Robertson’s and you will see that the dead return like everyone else:

[C9-33 | source PDF 237–237]
Heaven’s supreme justice, when need arises,
Suspends the eternal order it established;
It lets Death interrupt its laws
To terrify the earth…

[C9-34 | source PDF 237–238]
“Robertson summons phantoms, commands specters and makes the shades he conjures cross back over the river Acheron:

[C9-35 | source PDF 238–238]
I saw him: it is no passing error
Born of sleep’s deceitful vapor.

[C9-36 | source PDF 238–238]
“On 4 Germinal, I was with some sixty people in a brightly lit room at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier, No. 18. At precisely seven o’clock, a pale, thin man entered the room. After extinguishing the candles, he said: ‘Citizens and gentlemen, I am not one of those adventurers, those shameless charlatans who promise more than they deliver. I stated in the Journal de Paris that I would raise the dead; I shall raise them. Those present who wish to see an apparition of people dear to them, whose lives were ended by illness or otherwise, have only to speak. I shall obey their command.’ There was a moment’s silence. Then a disheveled man, his hair standing on end, his eyes sad and wild, with the features of a man from Arles, said: ‘Since I have been unable to restore the cult of Marat in an official newspaper, I should at least like to see his shade.’

[C9-37 | source PDF 238–239]
“Robertson pours onto a flaming brazier two glasses of blood, a bottle of vitriol, twelve drops of aqua fortis and two copies of the Journal des Hommes-Libres. At once a small, livid, hideous phantom gradually rises, armed with a dagger and wearing a red cap. The man with bristling hair recognizes Marat and tries to embrace him. The phantom makes a dreadful grimace and disappears.

[C9-38 | source PDF 239–239]
“A young dandy asks for the apparition of a woman he loved tenderly, showing her miniature portrait to the phantasmagorist, who throws sparrow feathers, a few grains of phosphorus and a dozen butterflies onto the brazier. Soon a woman appears, her bosom bare, her hair flowing, gazing upon her young friend with a tender, sorrowful smile.

[C9-39 | source PDF 239–239]
“A solemn man seated beside me puts his hand to his forehead and cries: ‘Heavens! I believe that is my wife!’ He slips away, fearing she may be more than a phantom.

[C9-40 | source PDF 239–239]
“A Swiss whom I took for Colonel Laharpe asks to see the shade of William Tell. Robertson places two ancient arrows upon the brazier and covers them with a broad hat…

[C9-41 | source PDF 239–240]
“At once the shade of the founder of Swiss liberty appears with republican pride, seeming to extend his hand to the colonel to whom Switzerland owes its new regeneration.

[C9-42 | source PDF 240–240]
“A young Swiss in spectacles, pale in complexion, with golden hair and his hands full of metaphysical pamphlets, tries to approach. The shade casts an angry glance at him and seems to say: ‘What are you doing here when my descendants are under arms to recover their rights?…’

[C9-43 | source PDF 240–240]
“Delille modestly expresses a wish to see Virgil’s shade. Without conjuration, at the mere wish of the translator of the Georgics, it appears and advances with a laurel wreath, which it places upon the head of its fortunate imitator.

[C9-44 | source PDF 240–240]
“The author of several much-praised tragedies confidently requests the apparition of Voltaire’s shade, hoping to receive a similar tribute. After some ceremonies, the creator of Brutus and Mahomet appears before the spectators. He catches sight of the modern tragedian and seems to say: ‘Do you think vanity is genius, and memory talent?’

[C9-45 | source PDF 240–241]
“‘Citizens and gentlemen,’ says Robertson, ‘thus far I have shown you only one shade at a time. My art is not confined to these trifles; this is only the prelude to your servant’s accomplishments. I can show benevolent men the crowd of shades of those whom they helped in life. Conversely, I can parade before the wicked the shades of their victims.’

[C9-46 | source PDF 241–241]
“An almost universal acclamation invited Robertson to make the trial. Only two individuals objected, and their opposition merely sharpened the gathering’s desire.

[C9-47 | source PDF 241–242]
“At once the phantasmagorist throws into the brazier the official report of May 31, those of the prison massacres at Aix, Marseille and Tarascon, a collection of denunciations and decrees, a list of suspects, the collected judgments of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a bundle of demagogic and aristocratic newspapers, and a copy of the Réveil du Peuple. Then he emphatically pronounces the magic words: ‘Conspirators, humanity, terrorist, justice, Jacobin, public safety, extremist, alarmist, hoarder, Girondin, moderate, Orleanist…’ At once groups of shades rise, covered in bloodstained veils. They surround and press upon the two individuals who had refused to yield to the general wish. Terrified by this dreadful spectacle, the pair rush from the room with frightful howls… One was Barrère, the other Chambon…

[C9-48 | source PDF 242–242]
“The performance was about to end when an amnestied Chouan employed in the Republic’s transport service asks Robertson whether he could bring back Louis XVI. To this indiscreet question Robertson very wisely replies: ‘I had a recipe for that before 18 Fructidor, but I have lost it since. I shall probably never find it again, and from now on it will be impossible to bring kings back to France.’

[C9-49 | source PDF 242–242]
“Poultier.”

[C9-50 | source PDF 242–243]
That last sentence, which Poultier put into my mouth, was ingenious. On my part it would have been a witty and skillful means of escaping the embarrassment caused by the request for Louis XVI’s shade, a highly indiscreet request at the time. I imagine the writer realized how much harm it might do me and kindly wished to forestall its unfortunate consequences. The apparition was indeed requested. I have reason to suspect an agent provocateur’s trick, the revenge of a police officer to whom I had refused some favor. Phantasmagoria suffered badly for it. The shades nearly disappeared altogether, and the specters nearly returned forever to the darkness of the tomb. They were provisionally prevented from appearing: official seals were placed upon my boxes and papers. Every place that might contain a trace of a ghost was searched. At the time I reflected, as events before and since have often confirmed, that chasing shadows and seizing phantoms in order to turn them into often disastrous realities was one of the secret police’s principal means of existence and one of its most dreadful necessities. Despite the most minute searches, which yielded nothing, my repeated efforts were in vain: I could not obtain permission to reopen the show. I realized that for at least a few weeks my efforts would achieve nothing, and left for Bordeaux.

[C9-51 | source PDF 243–244]
During my stay in that city I had reason to congratulate myself on making the acquaintance of a very learned and skillful professor of physics, Monsieur Cazalès, who attended my experiments assiduously. There, as in Paris, I drew crowds. The lively imagination of the men of Bordeaux and its spirited women seemed to anticipate the illusion. Indeed, that illusion was so complete that during one performance, as a skull seemed to hover over the assembly, Monsieur Cazalès tried several times to strike it with his cane. Although his blows were nimble, none, needless to say, reached it. Laughter broke out in the audience. Taking advantage of the mood, I continued the joke by sending the same skull right before its attacker’s eyes, with these words written in letters of fire: ‘Take care: this skull is a tough customer.’ Monsieur Cazalès renewed his attacks with still greater impetuosity. This combat between a most agreeable living man and a diminutive phantom, in which the latter kept the whole advantage, provoked universal laughter. I doubt whether the most farcical spectacle could arouse greater gaiety.

[C9-52 | source PDF 244–244]
Curiosity about my methods was intense; it will readily be understood that I took care not to satisfy it. I shall not weary the reader with frequent quotations from newspaper articles. A fairly short extract will show how the educated people of Bordeaux regarded these experiments:

[C9-53 | source PDF 244–245]
“The experiments Citizen Robertson has been offering the public for some time must surely have astonished all physicists acquainted with the difficulty of handling that most elusive and penetrating of elements, light. We know that it cannot strike a body without also revealing objects around it, or unrelated to the one we would wish to see alone.

[C9-54 | source PDF 245–245]
“Those familiar with the magical effects of catoptrics believe they can guess the ingenious means employed in phantasmagoria. But every insight of that science becomes a puzzle before the extraordinary experiment offered yesterday for the first time under the name of palingenesis. It is no longer a motionless, lifeless phantom, no longer an imaginary being: it is nature itself, living and moving, but in colors so unfamiliar to the eye that physicist and artist still doubt whether the object owes more to art or to nature. This experiment, an imitation of the Samuel of the Witch of Endor, will always impress draftsmen and artists whose art seeks to represent effects of light upon any plane, by the truth of its chiaroscuro. We urge them to see this living tableau, which Citizen Robertson regards as the utmost achievement of phantasmagoria. [C9-N4]”

[C9-55 | source PDF 246–246]
One always belongs to one’s own country. It is therefore natural that nearly all the jokes in Bordeaux should bear the stamp of Gascon wit and speech. An anonymous writer had the following verses, not without malice, inserted in a newspaper:

[C9-56 | source PDF 246–246]
TO CITIZEN ROBERTSON,
CREATOR OF PHANTASMAGORIA.

[C9-57 | source PDF 246–246]
Within Bordeaux’s walls, never, never, by God!
Had anyone seen so many spirits appear.
O Robert the sorcerer! One would think the devil
Had given you the power to raise everything from the dead.
Upon my honor, I believe you could,
Were I not a Gascon, give me quite a fright!
But go on, I fear nothing, I swear upon my soul,
Except to see my wife brought back by your art.

[C9-58 | source PDF 246–246]
P…

[C9-59 | source PDF 246–246]
Phantasmagoria was not the only thing to excite the curiosity of Bordeaux’s inhabitants. The physics experiments preceding the apparitions were also very successful. Galvanism in particular, then entirely new in France, which I had just been the first to demonstrate in Paris, [C9-N5] aroused as much astonishment as pleasure. I have said nothing about it in this chapter, to avoid confusing the narrative, but I shall make it the subject of the next.

[C9-60 | source PDF 247–248]
It was in Bordeaux that I first left the earth and attempted an all too brief excursion into the air. Messieurs C… and D… had announced an ascent in a hot-air balloon. I helped them with their preparations for part of the day, and as departure approached I envied the delights of their journey more and more. I was standing near the gallery when the ropes were cut. Unable to contain my impatience, I leaped between the two aeronauts, saying that there was certainly room for three. The balloon had already lifted us several toises above the ground while my companions had scarcely had time to express their surprise. They told me I would hinder their ascent and that it would be impossible for us to go far, meaning high, because of the excess weight. Indeed, the balloon soon sank. Much to my regret, but with no alternative, I got out, and the balloon resumed a swifter flight… Farewell, fortunate travelers!… A time will come when that aerial realm is familiar to me. For the moment, I consoled myself with this comparison: balloons are like post chaises. In such a carriage there is often room for three, even four, but the number of travelers cannot be increased unless the team is increased as well. [C9-N6] A balloon requires the same proportion: to load the basket more heavily, the balloon must be enlarged. Having room for three is not the whole matter.

Original notes

[C9-N1 | source PDF 223–225]
This eccentricity, of a kind unlikely to prove contagious, recalls certain rather singular habits of the celebrated English chemist Cavendish, who died in London in 1810. The following details are taken from a biographical notice published in recent years:
“Mr. Cavendish was about forty when one of his uncles, who had been a general overseas, returned from his travels and took exception to the way his family had neglected him. To compensate, at his death he made him heir to his entire fortune, amounting to more than a hundred thousand écus a year. Mr. Cavendish thus became by far the richest of all learned men, and probably also the most learned of all rich men. His relatives, now recognizing his merit, wished to draw closer to him, but he changed neither his way of life nor his associations. He was, and always remained, plain Mr. Cavendish. His dress and manners had a truly original simplicity. Nothing burdened him more than servants and the business of a household. Accordingly, everything at home ran by laws almost as constant as the motions of the heavenly bodies. Everything was arranged beforehand by formulas so exact that he never needed to concern himself with it. His servants were like automata, and his house like a watch that never needed winding. His clothes never changed in shape, color or material.
“Always dressed in gray, he had his new clothes scheduled in advance by the calendar, down to the fabric from which they were to be made. If the date of this change happened to be forgotten, he had only to utter the words ‘the tailor’ to recall it. The rest of his way of life was neither more complicated nor more expensive. This man who spent so little upon himself was truly royal in his generosity to science and in his private charity. He had assembled an immense and perfectly chosen library, open to scholars and anyone eager to learn. For this purpose he had admission cards printed, some allowing only work with the books, others permitting them to be taken home, according to the purpose and the person. But to avoid being disturbed by readers, he had placed his library two leagues from his residence, in the district where it could be most useful to scholars. He sent there for the books he needed, gave a receipt for them and returned them with the utmost punctuality. Noble and admirable disinterestedness, carried to the point of making him scrupulous about sharing a public benefit of which he himself was the author!
“With this simplicity and goodness of character, Mr. Cavendish had never married. Certain disappointments he had once experienced in his plans to settle down had turned him from marriage forever… He died at the age of seventy-seven…”

[C9-N2 | source PDF 227–227]
If anyone took this assertion by the author of Philosophy of Nature too seriously and attempted to refute it, I would abandon it.

[C9-N3 | source PDF 237–237]
8 Germinal, Year VI: March 28, 1798.

[C9-N4 | source PDF 245–245]
Courrier de la Gironde, 18 Brumaire, Year VII.

[C9-N5 | source PDF 246–246]
As early as Year VI I had presented galvanic experiments to the public at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier.

[C9-N6 | source PDF 248–248]
Everyone knows that for each traveler beyond two, an extra horse is added to the team.

Editorial record

Poultier’s long account is explicitly introduced by Robertson as almost entirely imaginary and satirical. Its conjurations, newspaper ingredients and political portraits are retained in that frame. Robertson distinguishes the real request for Louis XVI’s shade from the witty reply invented for him by Poultier.

Béer’s “poiésion,” derived from poix (pitch), is represented by the invented English “pitch-esive” in place of “cohesive.” The skull’s “c’est un crâne” also plays on the word for a bold or swaggering fellow; “this skull is a tough customer” makes both senses explicit. These are disclosed adaptations of wordplay, not additional events.

The Gascon epigram is translated in eight lines without imposing a different English regional accent or inventing rhymes. Its comic boast and fear of the wife’s return are preserved. The two quoted verse passages likewise retain their line counts and meaning, without metrical imitation. Abbreviated identities C… and D… and the signature P… remain masked.

Harmonica is rendered as glass harmonica. Catoptrics concerns reflected light; palingenesis is retained as the performance’s name for apparent reanimation. The technical titles and variant names Kirker/Kircker follow the printed source rather than being silently replaced with modern bibliographic forms. Historical inches, feet, toises, leagues, livres and écus are not converted.

The account’s allegations concerning Chappe’s drinking, death, discovery and uncle, its claims of scientific priority, the Cavendish biography and Molin’s claims about pregnancy and fright remain attributed historical statements, not independently verified conclusions. The author note qualifying the assertion about ten Rousseaus is preserved. The original note supplies March 28, 1798 alongside 8 Germinal, Year VI; other Republican dates remain unconverted.

The long Cavendish author note runs across printed pages 201–203. It has been separated from the main narrative and retained in full, including the library admission arrangements and age seventy-seven as printed. Extended printed dots are represented by ellipses; the row of dots after Molin’s remark about wandering hands is retained as an ellipsis rather than filled with invented text.

Chapter X

Chance and the sciences. The discovery of galvanism in Italy. Errors about nature. The first galvanometer. My conversion. Volta in my audience. A visit to Monsieur Charles. Priority in galvanic experiments in France. A session at the Institute. The triumph of Volta’s theory.

[C10-01 | source PDF 249–249]
I said in the preceding chapter that I would devote this one to an account of my galvanic experiments. The wholly modern, very recent creation of this important branch of physics offers further proof of the truth that, though the sciences are daughters of observation, reasoning and calculation, the discoveries that give birth to them are largely daughters of chance. All these sciences also have such feeble beginnings that one would refuse to foresee, even if it were possible, the degree of power they are destined to attain. So the vigorous man emerges from the frail child.

[C10-02 | source PDF 249–249]
“It is not amid the roar and violence of a torrent,” Volta told me, “that one studies hydraulics; nor was the theory of electricity grasped amid the turmoil and flashes of lightning.”

[C10-03 | source PDF 250–250]
What a distance there is, for example, between the fragile canoe of the savages and our formidable warships! Between the transparent bubble that rises into the air and vanishes, and those majestic globes that carry man into the upper regions of the atmosphere and bring him peacefully home! What a distance between the attraction of a small piece of amber, moving a light straw, and the thunderbolt effects of those electrical apparatuses that kill strong animals on the spot and force apart the most intimately combined substances, those that nature had, so to speak, commanded to be one!

[C10-04 | source PDF 250–251]
Would you like examples of those astonishing whims of chance, which plays such tricks on human discernment that it places before our eyes and in our hands, millions of times, the objects destined to become the first signs of a great natural law, without its occurring to anyone, for whole centuries, to discover the essential indication? See the oscillations of a lamp reveal the theory of the pendulum to Galileo, and workers on fountains teach him the fixed limit of water’s power to rise! Did the Chinese, playing with a magnet, suspect that Europeans would one day use it in a compass to come and find them? Jenner discovers vaccination by watching a cow being milked; and of all discoveries, the one that seems most to initiate man into the secret of creation, the mutual and orderly attraction of worlds, is revealed by the fall of an apple! From the father of so many fine inventions, mere chance, galvanism too was born. It was born before our eyes, yet the history of its first appearance already presents uncertainties and conflicting accounts. Monsieur Biot, in his Elementary Summary of Experimental Physics, tells it as follows:

[C10-05 | source PDF 251–253]
“It was about 1789 that the first observations of this kind were made. Galvani, professor of physics at Bologna, was investigating the excitability of muscular organs by electricity. For these trials he used frogs that had been killed and skinned, cutting their spinal columns to isolate and expose the lumbar nerves. To handle them easily, he had also passed a copper wire bent into a hook through the remaining portion of the spinal column. One day he happened to hang several frog carcasses by these copper hooks on the iron railing of a terrace. At once their feet and legs, which also rested partly against the iron, began to convulse spontaneously; the effect recurred whenever contact was renewed. Galvani shrewdly grasped the importance of the phenomenon and sought to determine its essential conditions. He first saw that instead of holding the frog in the hand one could place it on an iron plate, and that the convulsions still appeared when the copper hook was applied to the iron. He then recognized that everything came down to establishing a connection between the frog’s muscles and nerves by means of a metallic arc. He observed that convulsions still occurred when this arc consisted of a single metal, but were then very rare and very weak; to make them strong and lasting required the contact of two different metals. Once this condition was met, the connection could be completed with any substances, provided they conducted electricity. He introduced other animal parts into the connecting chains, and even living people holding hands: the convulsions still occurred. Now Galvani had recently recognized that electricity generated by ordinary methods produced similar effects on the organs of frogs exposed to its influence. The most obvious analogy therefore seemed bound to lead him to suppose that the convulsions produced by the contact of dissimilar metals were likewise the effect of an electrical current generated by that contact. Yet he did not draw this very simple conclusion. He thought he saw the extraordinary effect of a new source of electricity, which he called animal electricity, existing originally in the muscles and nerves and circulating when those parts were connected by a metallic arc or, in general, by good conductors of electricity.”

[C10-06 | source PDF 253–253]
Here now is how Monsieur Alibert recounts the discovery in his eulogy of Galvani:

[C10-07 | source PDF 253–254]
“One evening Galvani was in his laboratory, carrying out experiments with some friends and a nephew [C10-N1] of whom he was very fond. Some skinned frogs intended for broth had happened to be placed on a table holding an electrical machine. They were separated from the conductor by a certain distance. One of the people helping with the experiments inadvertently brought the point of a scalpel near the internal crural nerves of one of these animals: at once all the muscles of its limbs seemed shaken by violent convulsions. Galvani’s wife was present. Struck by the novelty of the phenomenon, she thought she noticed that it coincided with the discharge of the electrical spark. She ran to tell her husband, who immediately resolved to verify this extraordinary occurrence. Accordingly, when he again brought the point of the scalpel near the frog’s crural nerves while a spark was drawn from the electrical machine, the contractions recurred. They might have been attributable to the simple contact of the scalpel, acting as a stimulus, rather than to the discharge of the spark. To settle this doubt, Galvani touched the same nerves in other frogs while the electrical machine was at rest: no contractions then occurred. Frequently repeated, the experiment invariably produced the same results.”

[C10-08 | source PDF 254–255]
It was through the experiments prompted by this observation that Galvani discovered galvanic effects. But this account seems to describe an event that merely preceded the one reported by Monsieur Biot. When Volta spoke to me of the chance behind this discovery, he told the story as follows: “A pupil of Galvani’s fastened a mouse he had just killed to a partition, skinned it and began dissecting it. From time to time he noticed a slight quivering in the nervous parts when he touched them with two scalpels, probably of different materials. This phenomenon, to which the pupil drew his master’s attention, led to the discovery of galvanism.”

[C10-09 | source PDF 255–256]
Be that as it may, an observation recorded in the Journal encyclopédique of Bologna could, had physicists attended to it, have put them on the path to discovering galvanism as early as 1786. In number 8 of that journal we read that a medical student, feeling a pain low down on his leg, reached down and caught a mouse that had bitten him; that he immediately laid it on the table and dissected it; and that he was very surprised, on touching the animal’s intercostal or diaphragmatic nerve with his scalpel, to feel an electrical shock strong enough to numb his hand. From this observation Vassali, a member of the Turin Academy, conjectured that nature had some means of conserving and retaining electricity accumulated in some part of an animal’s body, to use as needed. He accordingly carried out experiments, the details of which were printed in 1789, confirming this opinion. [C10-N2] But we can see that Vassali resolved a question adjacent to galvanism, of which he then had no inkling.

[C10-10 | source PDF 256–257]
What progress this branch of science might have made long before that time, had Galvani’s discernment, which was true genius, been found in one of the readers of the Theory of Pleasure, an old book then more than half a century old and buried in obscurity throughout that interval! Those who envied Galvani unearthed it to diminish his glory; envy often renders this sort of service, bringing to light fine observations that have remained unknown. Sulzer, the author of the Theory of Pleasure, had himself taken it from the collected Memoirs of the Berlin Academy. “If,” he says, “one joins two pieces of metal, one of lead and the other of silver, so that their two edges form a single plane, and brings them onto the tongue, one will perceive a taste rather like that of iron vitriol, whereas each piece separately gives no trace of this taste. It is unlikely that joining the two metals causes either to dissolve and that the dissolved particles penetrate the tongue. We must therefore conclude that the junction of these metals produces in one or the other, or in both, a vibration of their particles, and that this vibration, which must necessarily affect the nerves of the tongue, produces the pleasure mentioned.” [C10-N3]

[C10-11 | source PDF 258–258]
I am far from agreeing with Monsieur Sue that this experiment bears only a very remote relation to Galvani’s experiments and their resulting effects. Whether two metals, through their union, produce a pleasurable sensation on the tongue or convulsive irritation in a frog’s muscles, the principle is the same, and in relation to it the two effects are analogous. Here is the fact that can reveal the theory; a series of phenomena and their very cause are indicated. Galvanism would emerge from it, were the observer not lacking; but nature seems to choose the man as well as the moment for disclosing each of her secrets at long intervals.

[C10-12 | source PDF 258–259]
The glory of Galvani and that of Volta therefore remain intact. One earned it by catching from chance the first observation of a new fact and grasping its importance; the other by being the first to identify its cause, demonstrate its nature and deduce its consequences. It was Volta, indeed, who laid down as a fundamental rule that this generation of electricity, of which he maintained galvanism was a part, arose solely from the contact of dissimilar metals. Once this point was seen, nothing was more natural than to vary the combinations of these metals and the applications of their power.

[C10-13 | source PDF 259–260]
Nor was Galvani alone in his camp. While some scholars suspected that the galvanic and electrical fluids were identical, other men no less distinguished declared for the existence of animal electricity. At the very time when my experiments tended to support this latter opinion, a report by Monsieur Cuvier to the Institute contained the following passage: “Citizen Fourcroy’s memoir is the result of very numerous experiments he has conducted with Citizens Vauquelin and Thénard. Along with a very ingenious explanation of the principal fact, it presents a multitude of previously unknown circumstances. Citizens Fourcroy and Vauquelin, names forever inseparable, and as closely united by glory as by friendship, in Citizen Leclerc’s words, [C10-N4] admit the existence of a particular fluid they call galvanic, which would circulate from the positive side of the pile toward the negative.” It is well known, moreover, how this question divided the learned world and received different answers, not only in France but throughout Europe. Volta alone, through the discernment of his observations, the clarity of his reasoning and the number and authority of his experiments, succeeded, after a war against the professor of Bologna as long and fierce as it was honorable to both opponents, in securing the triumph of the true theory of galvanic phenomena. It was accepted that the electrical fluid was produced in two ways: there was electricity at a distance and electricity by contact, or galvanism, although both were of identical nature.

[C10-14 | source PDF 260–260]
I recorded in the newspapers of the day the experiments that seemed to justify my holding a different opinion. The reader may not regret learning of them. I expressed myself as follows in the Journal de Paris of 10, 15 and 17 Fructidor, Year VIII:

[C10-15 | source PDF 260–261]
“Long occupied with everything concerning the galvanic fluid, I hastened to repeat the new experiments communicated to the Royal Society of London by Monsieur Volta. This discovery was reported during the last ten-day period in the Courrier de Londres, but very concisely and often inaccurately. Nevertheless, to obtain the truly astonishing results this experiment offers, I departed as little as possible from the procedures indicated there. Since this discovery may lead physics and chemistry in France to results that extend their reach and accelerate their progress, I have sent the National Institute the details of my work, undertaking to repeat it before that body or before commissioners appointed for the purpose.

[C10-16 | source PDF 261–262]
“Experiments. Since the galvanic fluid appears to act in proportion to the masses, and perhaps the surfaces, I had a hundred zinc pieces made. I placed one on a glass tray, put a six-franc écu on it, and on that a paper disk thoroughly soaked in water. I repeated this arrangement to a total of sixty-five zinc pieces, sixty-five silver pieces and as many disks of wet paper or card. This arrangement gave me a metallic pile thirty centimeters high. With my hands wet, I placed a finger of the left hand under the bottom zinc piece and touched the silver piece at the top of the pile with my right forefinger. I felt only an imperceptible sensation, which I even attributed to imagination and my desire to succeed. I made several attempts and obtained a distinct sensation only by touching with the joint of the little finger. It even seemed stronger when the tip of either finger carried a drop of water with which I touched the upper metal, or when I touched it with a silver coin. The sensation was then sharp and continuous, affecting only the nerves of the fingers touching that metal. These different shades of sensation were repeated and experienced by Citizens Pujot, a chemist, and Guérin, a physicist, who were present at the experiments.

[C10-17 | source PDF 262–262]
“Observation. The sensation experienced, which has been called a galvanic shock, seems to me nothing but an actual irritation affecting only the nervous system and varying with the limb and organ subjected to the test. Very often it is imperceptible to the forefinger, whose frequent use makes the skin calloused and less excitable, whereas the joints of the other fingers and the neighboring nerves of the forearm are sensitive to it.

[C10-18 | source PDF 262–263]
“What one experiences in this experiment closely resembles the contraction, the sort of stiffness suddenly felt when a nerve is slightly bruised, as happens when the nerves at the point of the elbow are struck. The exception is that this galvanic shock is slight and extends only an inch or two from the point of contact. In this respect, and in many others, it differs from the electrical shock. It is important that the paper disks be thoroughly soaked in water, for water appears here to be the sole conductor of the binary emanations occurring at each intervening layer. The same is not true of the hands: it would be enough for the finger that touches to be wet. Repeating the same experiment several times, it seemed to me that the first effects were always the strongest, and that the galvanic sensation, diminishing with time, finally disappeared altogether. Perhaps this effect is due to water draining or evaporating from the cards; perhaps to an irritation which, too often repeated, eventually dulled the nerves affected; perhaps to the speed with which the zinc and silver pieces oxidize at their contact. Repeated experiments that I propose to make on these results will doubtless enable us to dispel the remaining uncertainties.

[C10-19 | source PDF 264–264]
“Among the many experiments I had occasion to perform, I believe none is more interesting than subjecting different parts of the body to galvanic contact. Here are the results of the trials I attempted:

[C10-20 | source PDF 264–264]
“If, placing your hand on the lower metal, you touch the upper metal with the tip of your nose, you immediately feel a very sharp prick, like that of a pin, and perceive the galvanic flash.

[C10-21 | source PDF 264–264]
“If you touch with the chin, the lips or other parts where the skin is delicate and sensitive, you will feel the same prick but without a flash. In general, I have noticed that the galvanic flash occurs only when contact is made with parts near the maxillary or optic nerves.”

[C10-22 | source PDF 264–264]
The following article will show how actively the imagination, when seeking one goal and evading another, varies the illusions that enthrall the mind. Committed to my first idea of the existence of a special fluid called galvanism, I wrote as follows to the newspaper already cited:

[C10-23 | source PDF 264–265]
“When a new fact of nature seems to leave wider scope for reasoning than for experiment, it must doubtless appear dangerous to put forward a new opinion that time and further observations may overthrow at any moment.

[C10-24 | source PDF 265–265]
“I have rejected the electrical fluid as the principle of galvanism, attributing it instead to an acid sui generis. At first I presented this opinion only with the modesty of doubt. Today a multitude of facts and new observations seem to combine to justify it, and even to establish its credibility: first, tinctures of violets and litmus, enclosed in glass tubes to allow the galvanic fluid to pass, quickly turn green, sometimes in less than an hour; second, dissimilar metals placed against one another and wetted oxidize rapidly and leave a kind of whitish salt; third, the rod that oxidizes during the decomposition of water deposits a substance that seemed to me a kind of galvanade; fourth, the galvanic fluid seems, under the microscope and to the senses, to offer effects resembling those of acids. The continuation of my investigations into the nature of these phenomena, which currently occupy physics and chemistry, will doubtless strengthen the analogy I seek to establish.

[C10-25 | source PDF 265–266]
“Having recently described in this newspaper the means of accumulating the galvanic fluid by the symmetrical arrangement of a large number of zinc and silver plates joined in pairs and separated by paper disks, I think it worth pointing out today: first, that I have observed the paper disks to be far less essential to the experiment than the water; second, that if one wishes to retain these intervening disks, the metallic column can be given a more convenient and less unsteady arrangement than the one described in my last memoir.

[C10-26 | source PDF 266–267]
“With scissors, cut strips of fairly thick blotting paper the full length of the sheet and two fingers wide. Dip them in water, then arrange on the table a zinc plate against a six-franc écu, inclined at forty-five degrees. Cover the upper metal with the end of your paper strip, then place another zinc piece and an écu, fold your strip back over them, and continue this arrangement up to sixty zinc pieces and sixty silver pieces. The paper, folded back at each intervening layer, will form a kind of zigzag along the whole length. This new arrangement will give you the metallic column laid horizontally on the table. It is important that the paper be thoroughly soaked in water. Lukewarm water even seemed to give the galvanic acid more power; this is the means I used to make it perceptible when its effects seemed to weaken.

[C10-27 | source PDF 267–268]
“As for the cardboard disks and strips of paper, extremely minute experiments, carefully repeated, have shown me that they are not essential to the experiment and can be omitted. These extraneous bodies are present only as absorbent substances to hold the water that conducts the galvanic fluid and transmits it from one metal to the other. One can be convinced of this truth by the following arrangement. Set fifteen, twenty or thirty glasses full of water beside one another in a line. In the first, place a zinc plate inclined so that its end touches a six-franc écu positioned in the second glass. At the opposite rim of this glass, place another inclined zinc piece, likewise touching the silver piece in the third glass, and so on, establishing an uninterrupted connection from the first vessel to the last. With the apparatus arranged in this way, if you touch the metal in the first glass with one hand and the metal in the last with the other, you will immediately feel the galvanic sensation, all the more powerfully the more often this arrangement is repeated. With this apparatus one can repeat the decomposition of water and all the experiments detailed in my last memoir when discussing the metallic column. It is important to observe that the galvanic effect gains immensely in power when the oxidation of the metals is accelerated by saturating the water of the galvanic column, or that in the glasses, with muriate of ammonia or sulfate of alumina, and so on.”

[C10-28 | source PDF 268–268]
Following these observations I placed the description of a galvanometer of my own invention, the first devised in France:

[C10-29 | source PDF 268–269]
“When a science advances and its principles begin to unfold, it needs apparatus and a reliable method to guide its progress and distinguish plausibility from reality. In this respect galvanic experiments lack a sensitive instrument that can enable observers to recognize the presence, movement and, above all, action of this fluid. Until new observations and fortunate discoveries provide a more perfect one, I shall say a word about the instrument I use:

[Original illustration: chapter-ten-galvanometer.png]
Robertson’s galvanometer. Original uncaptioned engraving, Volume I, printed p.247; descriptive caption supplied for this edition.

[C10-30 | source PDF 269–269]
“It is a glass capillary tube with a bore of one line and a length of eight inches, filled with water. One end is fitted with a zinc rod and the other with a silver rod. They extend into the water to within an inch of each other. The part of the glass corresponding to the whole length of the zinc rod is graduated in tenths of a line. The end on this side of the tube has a tap through which water is introduced and which allows air to escape when the apparatus is working.

[C10-31 | source PDF 269–270]
“To use it, it must be placed in the galvanic chain. Bubbles detaching themselves from the end of one of the rods announce the presence of the fluid. The greater or lesser quantity of these bubbles is indicated by the graduations on the glass, so that by measuring the time one recognizes the greater or lesser activity of the galvanic current. This apparatus seems to indicate fairly well the movement and progress of that current, always announced by a little trail of bubbles flowing sometimes from one rod and sometimes from the other. This varying flow will doubtless perplex physicists. Its cause may lie in the nature of the metal, its mass, its quality, or even the hygrometric or barometric state of the atmosphere.”

[C10-32 | source PDF 270–270]
A rather curious observation to make here is that the theory I was developing in this way proved to agree perfectly with one an Italian scholar, Brugnatelli, devised independently at Pavia a few months later. Here is what the historian of galvanism, Monsieur P. Sue the elder, says on the subject: [C10-N5]

[C10-33 | source PDF 271–271]
“It is not uncommon to see scholars, and especially physicists, converge upon the same ideas and make the same discoveries in the scientific matters they have chosen as subjects of study. Robertson’s theory of galvanism offers an example. While he was making it known in France in Year VIII and developing its proofs, Brugnatelli at Pavia was inventing a similar one, which he recorded in a long memoir in his Journal encyclopédique in Year IX, or 1801. Thus, when he recently came to Paris with Volta, he was very surprised to find in the Annales de chimie an opinion entirely like his own, put forward by Robertson, although they had had no communication or correspondence concerning galvanism. Both, moreover, appear to have sacrificed their theoretical discovery to the ingenious and proven one established by Volta in his latest memoir.”

[C10-34 | source PDF 271–272]
Here is the natural occasion to say how my conversion took place, or rather how it was completed. Contrary inferences drawn from new experiments, and fairly satisfactory explanations of the previous phenomena, had already shaken my belief in a special electricity. One day, 9 Vendémiaire, Year IX, during my public experiments on galvanism, I was expressing my doubts on this point and listing the differences I still perceived between the electrical and galvanic fluids, when one of my listeners rose and said that Monsieur de Volta, who was present, would be very pleased to dispel my remaining doubts. The speaker was Doctor Brugnatelli, mentioned above. He had accompanied the celebrated Volta on a journey to Paris for which they had obtained permission from the Cisalpine government, to confer with French scholars on various scientific subjects and chiefly on the discoveries concerning the galvanic pile. [C10-N6] I eagerly accepted Monsieur Volta’s flattering offer.

[C10-35 | source PDF 272–273]
Early the next morning he came to my house, carrying small galvanic apparatuses and a live frog in his pocket. We spent the whole morning making experiments, none of which succeeded. Volta blamed the humidity of the air for these poor results; I, with better reason, attributed them to the imperfections of his metallic condensers. [C10-N7] But he explained his theory so lucidly, and developed his insights, observations and their consequences with such clarity, that my conviction did not wait for more favorable experiments. I became an adherent of his system all the more sincere because, having initially opposed it more strongly, I had yielded only to the demonstration of truth. I even helped to make it more palpable through a few new results.

[C10-36 | source PDF 273–274]
Monsieur de Volta did not confine himself to this first visit. Relations of goodwill on his part, which I may even call mutual friendship, developed between us. My cabinet offered him useful resources in apparatus. His instruments were truly imperfect; mine, by contrast, astonished him by their perfection and even by the effects obtained from them. He constantly praised the flatness of my condensers. Moreover, my pile, composed of very pure zinc and cupelled silver, produced three times the effect of ordinary piles. He also found my electrometer exquisitely sensitive. In short, he was so pleased with all my apparatus that, after returning to Italy, he wrote asking me to send him similar instruments.

[C10-37 | source PDF 274–275]
Monsieur de Volta asked me to serve as his guide in Paris, and I hastened to take him to the establishments where the discovery of galvanism ought to have made its way: the School of Medicine, the École Polytechnique and Monsieur Charles’s cabinet. How astonished he was to find that I was the only person in Paris occupied with this fine discovery! Even the Institute seemed neither to have made nor encouraged any trial of it. [C10-N8] Monsieur Charles gave us a very peculiar reception. He had not expected our visit at all. I named and introduced Monsieur de Volta, who was eager to discuss his work with so distinguished a physicist. Monsieur Charles immediately showed great embarrassment, even confusion. He was, he told us, more sorry than he could say to be obliged to leave in haste and unable to take advantage of so valuable an opportunity; but he was expected and already late. He added, however, that we were absolute masters in his cabinet and that everything in it was at our disposal. After these few words, to which he seemed to seek no reply, he bowed and left. Alone in the cabinet, we looked at one another in bewilderment. “What are we to do here?” Volta asked me. “Here is a very fine cabinet, but the object of our visit was not to admire instruments of physics. There is no smell of galvanism in this atmosphere,” he continued, laughing. He had guessed correctly: Monsieur Charles had then studied it no more than the other physicists of France. Our suspicions were confirmed when, after getting into a hackney carriage, we saw Monsieur Charles watching for our departure from a bookseller’s shop in the Rue du Coq. He headed back to his cabinet as soon as our carriage had gone a little way.

[C10-38 | source PDF 275–277]
It was therefore not without reason that the Biography of Contemporaries cited me as the first to make galvanism known in France: what precedes confirms that assertion. [C10-N9] The celebrated Delalande, in a letter to the Journal de Paris of 17 Pluviôse, Year VII, claimed this priority. He cited a notice of his in the Journal des Savans of November 1792, containing an account of the events that supplied the first notions of galvanism. There is undoubtedly merit in mentioning in a public journal the new discoveries that come to one’s knowledge. But can a few lines that passed unnoticed, provoking no new investigations and exciting no desire to examine and explore the facts stated, without even their author having verified their reality by experiment, constitute an exclusive title to this priority? A paragraph in an Italian journal published by Brugnatelli revealed to me the first phenomena observed by Galvani and repeated by Volta. I immediately tried to reproduce them; and judging them likely to stimulate curiosity keenly, awaken interest and extend science, I did not hesitate to make them public. They did indeed make a great impression. Every day a large company came to enjoy these experiments, which preceded the phantasmagoria. The newspapers then took them up; people spoke of them in society, which is the true means of giving impetus to anything whatsoever, and the general movement was launched.

[C10-39 | source PDF 277–277]
Yet some learned men, who did not know everything, since they were ignorant of the precept to doubt and examine before judging, did not fail to ridicule galvanism and declare it outright charlatanry. Some newspaper editors joined in. One maintained that I possessed marvelous dexterity of finger with which to produce apparent movements in a lifeless animal; another declared me worthy of marching under Mesmer’s banners, and so forth. But when the theory became known, everyone hastened to declare that he had been among the first to take it up.

[C10-40 | source PDF 277–279]
When Monsieur de Volta came to Paris, his arrival caused a sensation; his work at the Institute attracted great attention. He asked me to accompany him to its sessions. Detained by my public experiments, I could not be free until very late. Monsieur Biot came to fetch me and told me that the Institute wished me to repeat some of my experiments before it. I had not yet finished with my audience; he kindly waited quite a long time, and we left. On reaching the gateway of the Louvre, our carriage was refused entry. The approaches to the palace, where the Institute then met, were guarded by many soldiers; it took an order from a senior officer to allow us upstairs. I hardly knew what to make of this display of force, and on entering the meeting room I cast a quick glance around the whole assembly. The members of the Institute, standing bareheaded, were ranged around a large round table, and Monsieur de Volta was explaining his theory. He was being listened to with close attention. When he cited the ignition of hydrogen gas by the galvanic spark as proof that electricity and galvanism were identical, he kindly took care to say that I had been the first to perform this experiment, and invited me to repeat it before the Institute. Hydrogen gas was immediately obtained from Monsieur Charles’s cabinet, next to the meeting room. The report of Volta’s pistol seemed to awaken a member at the far end of the room, apparently inattentive, whose imagination was perhaps at that moment hovering over the whole world, a hundred leagues from galvanism, while his discerning mind was occupied in unraveling the nature of this fluid’s effects. He seemed suddenly to emerge from deep preoccupation and fixed his eyes particularly on me, no doubt because of the noise the electrical weapon had just made in my hands. Then, turning to a member standing fairly near him, he said: “Fourcroy, here are phenomena that belong more to chemistry than to physics, and which you ought to take up.” A very just distinction, made evident by a host of subsequent applications. Thus I first saw the First Consul Buonaparte. What extraordinary destinies still lay unborn for this man, already surrounded at that time by so brilliant a fortune!

[C10-41 | source PDF 279–281]
The ignition of hydrogen gas by the galvanic spark triumphantly completed Volta’s explanations and, so to speak, set the seal upon them. It did more to convince the listeners than the professor’s entire discourse: so much greater is the power of facts one witnesses than of facts one can only imagine. It was at an earlier session [C10-N10] that the First Consul proposed awarding Volta a gold medal. The Institute appointed a commission [C10-N11] to report on the memoir and on the First Consul’s proposal. On 11 Frimaire, Year X, Monsieur Biot delivered the report, ending with these words: “In accordance with the request made by one of your members (the First Consul), which you referred to the commission, we propose offering Citizen Volta the Institute’s medal in gold, as a token of the class’s satisfaction with the fine discoveries with which he has just enriched the theory of electricity, and as proof of its gratitude for his communicating them.”

[C10-42 | source PDF 281–282]
Monsieur Volta’s journey to France was therefore truly useful to science. Without his spoken explanations, supported by the authority of his reputation and the effect of his experiments, his memoirs might not have sufficed to establish the evidence for his theory completely. Several physicists or physicians, including Messieurs Alibert and Biot, had already, it is true, suspected that the two fluids were identical; but, as I have said, other illustrious scholars opposed this opinion. “It is not proven,” Fourcroy said in the Moniteur of 5 Messidor, Year IX, discussing the results of some experiments, “that these galvanic effects are the same as those of electricity, despite the identity that very illustrious physicists have hitherto admitted between the two fluids. It even seems that the more trials and discoveries multiply, the more this alleged identity disappears, or at least weakens. [C10-N12] … Without yet taking sides on this matter, Citizens Vauquelin, Thénard, Hachette and I continue the investigations we have undertaken, and we shall await from experiment alone a decision that reasoning must not presume to anticipate.” Volta’s triumph swept away hesitation and dispelled doubt, at least for the most part. Some people nevertheless persisted in the other belief and raised new objections. An anonymous writer addressed some to me in the Journal de Paris; they appeared, along with my reply, in Monsieur Sue’s work, from which the following passage is taken:

[C10-43 | source PDF 282–283]
“Since the exposition of Volta’s theory, and since following and repeating, as he still does publicly three times in every ten-day period, the experiments detailed in Volta’s latest memoir, Citizen Robertson has greatly changed his opinion on the nature of galvanism and regards the fluid given that name as purely electrical. Thus, in his collection of new experiments on Volta’s metallic pile, he demonstrates the electrical phenomena it presents. From its top he draws brilliant sparks that melt metal, and by simple contact with this pile he charges a hundred square feet with electricity. Shocks, flashes, attractions, divergence of the electrometer, the firing of the pistol, decomposition of water, Leyden jars charged by the metallic pile, combustion of iron wire, and finally movements restored by the galvanic fluid to an animal dead for several days: these are what Robertson demonstrates, these are what draw at least as many people to his sessions as his other experiments in physics and his phantasmagoria.”

[C10-44 | source PDF 283–284]
“An anonymous writer says that at Robertson’s he has acquainted himself with the theories of all the new galvanic experiments. He maintains that Robertson, Volta’s most zealous disciple, sees electricity in everything and everywhere, and does all he can to prove it. He adds that all these fine experiments have not yet convinced him and that doubts remain which he wishes to clear up. ‘Indeed, first, how is it that Citizen Robertson, who possesses two enormous electrical machines about five feet in diameter, cannot decompose water, whereas a small centime seven lines in diameter, placed against a piece of zinc weighing four gros, decomposes water in an instant? Second, how is it also that, by arranging plates of a single metal with layers of different liquids, Robertson obtains effects exactly like those of a pile made of disks of different metals? I submit these observations,’ says the anonymous writer, ‘to the advocates of galvanism and those of electricity.’”

[C10-45 | source PDF 284–284]
Here is Citizen Robertson’s answer to these observations:

[C10-46 | source PDF 284–285]
“I shall not enter into lengthy discussions, Citizens, concerning the observations recorded in your paper of 20 Frimaire on the existence of a new fluid that people wish to introduce into physics. The objections raised follow from the heresy we shared with all the German physicists concerning the nature of the fluid improperly called galvanic. After the conclusive experiments of the celebrated Volta, one might have believed that Paris contained only true believers. But the conversion is not general, since the author of the letter in question maintains that the galvanic fluid presents anomalies seemingly contrary to the theory of electricity. What, then, must we conclude? That theories devised by men are not as complete or infallible as the laws of nature. Her course is constant and sure; certainly she is not the one who is mistaken. This truth must wound our vanity, which claims to explain all nature and subject her to the theoretical calculations it has proclaimed.

[C10-47 | source PDF 285–285]
“If it is true that nature is simple and sparing in her principles and procedures, I do not see why the physicist should resort to a peculiar, imaginary fluid to explain galvanic phenomena, when they can all be brought within the theory of electricity:

[C10-48 | source PDF 285–286]
“First, it is objected that with my large electrical apparatus I cannot decompose water, whereas with a centime and a very small piece of zinc this is easily done. The author of this objection is doubtless unaware that water has long been decomposed in France by electrical discharges. Monsieur Nicholson in London has even achieved it with a simple electrical current, using a gold wire embedded in a glass tube that is ground down until the end of the metal can be seen through a magnifying glass. I accomplish this decomposition more easily by charging an immense battery and placing a very fine platinum wire, embedded in a nonconducting substance, in the connecting chain from the inside to the outside. This wire ends at a small cylinder of water. The electrical current, continually replenished by continuous rotation, is forced to squeeze through this inadequate conductor. As it passes, it decomposes the water to a greater or lesser extent according to how closely the thickness of the metallic wire corresponds to the abundance of the electrical current.

[C10-49 | source PDF 286–287]
“Second, it is further objected that by arranging plates of a single metal between layers of different liquids, I obtain the same results as with an arrangement of different metals. It is true that a single metal and a series of different liquids, such as water, tin, nitrous acid, and so on, present effects exactly like those of Volta’s pile; but the conclusion drawn from this is mistaken. A metallic body does not alone have the privilege of imparting electricity to another, dissimilar metal: this property is common to all bodies, whatever their nature. When they are in contact, a kind of electrical equilibrium is established between them, always related to their constituent parts, so that it is possible to construct an electrical battery with disks of different kinds of wood, liquids, salts, and so on. If nature is sparing in principles, she is not sparing in consequences. I conclude, Citizens, because I believe I have sufficiently justified the reasons that led me to admit, in my demonstrations of galvanism, one single agent: the great law of electricity.”

[C10-50 | source PDF 287–288]
Although the subject I have treated in this chapter is familiar to everyone, it seemed to me that, having been the first to offer galvanic experiments in France, it fell to me to give the history of its discovery and of the opinions that divided the learned world for several years before the true theory was generally adopted. But I see that I have carried my narrative too far, and I hasten to return to the beginning of Year IX, when I transferred my establishment to the former convent of the Capucines. Long before reaching this point, however, I ought to have said a word about the competition through which I obtained the chair of physics at the central school of the department of the Ourthe. I gave some demonstrations with my own instruments, but, my efforts to obtain others in both Liège and Paris having failed, I waited for a more complete organization before offering regular courses. In the meantime I found myself drawn onto another path in Paris, and secured acceptance of the resignation I tendered to the administrators of the department in a letter printed in the Gazette de Liège of 5 Floréal, Year VI.

[C10-51 | source PDF 288–288]
My compatriots will doubtless be pleased to find here a letter from the estimable Monsieur Villette, written two years after that time, in which he gives me some details about the state of education in Liège. It will also show the disinterestedness and noble feelings of this physicist, to whom his native city owes more than one service in the teaching of the sciences.

[C10-52 | source PDF 289–289]
Liège, 14 Nivôse, Year VIII.

[C10-53 | source PDF 289–290]
“Yesterday evening I received your very flattering letter dated 7 Nivôse, which, through the pleasure it gave me, contributed not a little to increasing my habitual insomnia. The pleasure of conversing with you, the long deprivation of which has caused me many regrets, made me leave my bed an hour earlier than usual. It is four in the morning, and I have already had my five cups of tea. Although being alone in bed and unable to sleep is not very pleasant (and what would I do with company at seventy-one years and four days!), I find, whatever Pergoles may say with his Servant Mistress, that this is no reason to go and hang oneself. Nor have I the slightest desire to do so, all the less because I have never enjoyed better health. That is very fortunate at your age, you will tell me, my dearest friend; and I shall tell you: not so very, for one contemplates with a little more regret that eternal eternity one is so close to entering, leaving everything without the least hope of return. What shall become of me? How shall I exist? Will raging caloric vent its fury, assisted by a dozen diving devils, [C10-N13] on my poor little soul, with which I hardly have the honor of acquaintance and which has governed my imbecile body like an innocent? When you have a little leisure, for I imagine the marvelous and most admirable phantasmagoria leaves you scarcely any, calm my anxieties on these matters a little. It will cost you only the trouble of questioning all those famous dead people with whom you live on familiar terms. Do not suppose, however, that the future or the present, however disagreeable they may be, disturb my repose. I live peacefully and happily, although the republic has cruelly clipped my little fortune, the Emperor is cheating me of 15,000 francs with his Vienna bank, and the detestable English of 4,800 francs with their Surinam plantations. If they leave me the remnants of my little patrimony, I shall still say with the Married Philosopher:

[C10-54 | source PDF 290–290]
Content with a fortune equal to my wishes,
I see all my desires fully satisfied;

[C10-55 | source PDF 290–290]
especially if you preserve for me a share of your friendship.

[C10-56 | source PDF 290–291]
“I congratulate you on being acquainted with the amiable and agreeable author of 2440. Had his admirable plan simply been adopted, we would have spared ourselves a host of troubles. Do me the favor of telling me whether his fine Tableau de Paris still bears any resemblance to its subject, for over so long an interval [C10-N14] its features must have changed. I should be very curious to know what the author of the Tableau de Paris now thinks about the chapter entitled: Must the Great City Be Destroyed?

[C10-57 | source PDF 291–293]
“I am delighted to see that you still take some interest in our little country, asking what is happening here in the advancement of the sciences. If the schools are not as full of pupils as they ought to be, do not attribute it to the indifference or incapacity of the professors, but to the avarice and fanaticism of parents who think one cannot be learned without being tonsured. Besides, the schools are not as deserted as you have been led to believe. Citizen Pitou, professor of natural history, has some twenty pupils; the mathematics school, where Thomassin is professor, has more. He has had the satisfaction of seeing one of his pupils admitted to the École Polytechnique. The natural-history cabinet grows richer every day, both through consignments from the minister and through purchases we have had occasion to make at very favorable prices. The physics cabinet is being furnished rather slowly, which distresses me greatly. I have attended to it with the utmost zeal and complete disinterestedness. You would be astonished to see the quantity of very well-made pieces, many of them even with a certain splendor, that I have managed to obtain with the modest sum of 2,700 livres, secured only with great difficulty. Had the money continued to come, we would now have a cabinet worth 25,000 francs that would not have cost a quarter of that; but I am left to languish in inactivity. Physics and chemistry seem to be the branches least deserving of the government’s attention. I would gladly advance a few thousand francs to move things forward if they would give me a private guarantor. I am going to have an electrical machine built with a disk thirty inches in diameter, of a kind of plate glass I have always found far superior to Paris glass. If you have any new observations on this subject, you would give me great pleasure by communicating them; I would be guided by your advice. I was almost resolved to give up the trouble of having machines built, and I fear that if I am given occasion to concern myself with them again I shall get back into the same galley. What can one do? One must die at one’s post of honor!

[C10-58 | source PDF 293–293]
“Farewell, my dear friend. I wish you good health and every kind of happiness. Be assured of my affection.”

[C10-59 | source PDF 293–293]
F. Villette.

Original notes

[C10-N1 | source PDF 253–253]
Camille Galvani, author of a short work on the Phosphorescent Stone of Bologna and of an abridgment of Buffon’s Natural History.

[C10-N2 | source PDF 256–256]
It is known that certain fish, four in number, generate very powerful electricity at will, which they use to give their enemies violent shocks, or even, it is said, to strike them dead. These effects are especially intense in the torpedo. The other three are the electric gymnate, or Surinam eel; the silurus; and the electric tetradon.

[C10-N3 | source PDF 257–257]
To make perceptible the peculiar effect produced on the tongue by the contact of two dissimilar metals, I had made some very convenient little mouthpieces, which needed only to be fitted to the mouth for the galvanic influence to be felt. At one of my public demonstrations someone came onto my platform, as was customary, to experience the effect of one of these mouthpieces. He made such an extraordinary face on bringing it to his lips that laughter broke out from every corner of the room: everyone had recognized Brunet, the actor from the Variétés.

[C10-N4 | source PDF 259–259]
Public session of the Paris School of Medicine, 24 Vendémiaire, Year X; quarto, p. 67.

[C10-N5 | source PDF 270–270]
History of Galvanism and Analysis of the Various Works Published on This Discovery, from Its Origin to the Present Day; by P. Sue the elder, professor and librarian at the Paris School of Medicine, former secretary of the Academy of Surgery, etc. First part, 1802; second part, 1805.

[C10-N6 | source PDF 272–272]
Volta’s reputation was at stake in refuting the errors being spread by Doctor Aldini, who was also traveling at this time and seemed to declare himself the rival of the professor of Pavia.

[C10-N7 | source PDF 273–273]
A metallic plate that doubles the electricity.

[C10-N8 | source PDF 274–274]
Nevertheless, Monsieur Valli had presented twenty-two experiments on galvanism, which this physicist also called animal electricity, to the Academy in 1792. The Academy charged Messieurs Leroi, Vicq d’Azyr and Coulon with repeating these experiments with Monsieur Valli. The principal ones were performed in Monsieur Fourcroy’s laboratory on July 12, 1792, in the presence of several scholars of the capital. Some succeeded, others did not; but the memory and traces of these experiments seemed to have been lost.

[C10-N9 | source PDF 276–276]
My first public experiments on galvanism took place in Year VI at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier, and we have seen above that in Year VII I was already repeating them in Bordeaux.

[C10-N10 | source PDF 280–280]
The reading of Monsieur de Volta’s memoir occupied three sessions, those of 16, 18 and 21 Brumaire. At the close of the first reading Bonaparte proposed awarding the medal and, at the same time, having all the experiments relating to galvanism repeated on a large scale within the Institute by a commission appointed ad hoc. The experiments I have described took place at the last of these three sessions.
The medal offered to Volta was struck from the same die and was the same size as the silver medal received by members of the Institute, and bore this inscription: TO VOLTA, SESSION OF 11 FRIMAIRE, YEAR X.

[C10-N11 | source PDF 280–280]
This commission brought together too splendid a collection of illustrious names for me to omit them. It consisted of Citizens Laplace, Coulomb, Hallé, Monge, Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Pelletan, Charles, Brisson, Sabatier, Guyton and Biot. Only one of these scholars is still alive; death has reaped all the rest. What rich spoils taken from the sciences in less than a quarter of a century!

[C10-N12 | source PDF 281–282]
Here are the proofs Fourcroy offered in support of this opinion: “Piles of large plates that ignite iron give no indication, or almost none, on the most sensitive electrometers. Lifting the upper zinc plate away from the lower plates with silk cords, as one does with the electrophorus, we obtained nothing on bringing Saussure’s electrometer near it. In vain we tried to produce the chemical effects of galvanism, the dissolution of metallic oxides, the precipitation of their solutions and the decomposition of acids, using the most powerful and varied electrical apparatus.”
We see that these physicists rejected the identity on the basis of negative quantities, whereas I rejected it by citing positive quantities.

[C10-N13 | source PDF 289–289]
Little enamel figures of devils, made to move in a jar by compressing the air.

[C10-N14 | source PDF 291–291]
The Tableau de Paris appeared in 1782.

Editorial record

The conflicting discovery stories, scientific theories, first-in-France claims and anecdotes remain attributed historical claims. The chapter’s distinction between animal electricity, galvanic fluid and electricity, including theories later rejected by the narrator, has not been rewritten as modern science. The four named electric fish and the assertion about the origin of vaccination are retained as printed.

Numbers, apparatus dimensions and historical units are retained without modern conversion: the initial pile uses65 pairs, the horizontal arrangement60, the instrument has a one-line bore and an eight-inch length. The historical names muriate of ammonia, sulfate of alumina, nitrous acid, caloric and the proposed substance galvanade are retained. The word galvanometer here refers to the bubble-producing instrument described and pictured by Robertson, not a later magnetic instrument.

The source dates Volta’s visit to9 Vendémiaire, Year IX, while describing Institute events in Year X, and dates the move to the Capucines to the beginning of Year IX. These dates have not been silently reconciled. The author’s footnote acknowledging Valli’s1792 experiments is retained beside his claim of priority, as are all fourteen notes, including the two separate notes on printed258 and the continuing note on259–260.

The list water, tin, nitrous acid follows the source even though its introductory wording calls the series different liquids. The poorly punctuated phrase about wood, liquids and salts on printed265 is read as an enumeration. Neither passage has been silently rewritten to fit modern electrochemistry. The author’s negative and positive quantities in the Fourcroy note refer in context to unsuccessful and successful observations, not a supplied measurement of electrical polarity.

Villette’s complete letter, dateline, signature and two-line verse quotation are retained. Ludions is rendered diving devils to preserve both the moving figures and the joke about hell; the original explanatory footnote follows. The book title2440, the figures15,000,4,800,2,700 and25,000, and the age seventy-one years and four days were checked against the images. The source’s Pergoles and its date1782 for Tableau de Paris are retained. The verse is translated without invented rhyme.

Zing is rendered zinc; condensateur as condenser, with the author’s original short definition; planimétrie as flatness; argent de coupelle as cupelled silver. The apparatus passages are historical description, not modern operating instructions. The original inline engraving and chapter tailpiece are reproduced from the historical scan with no generated content.

Chapter XI

The convent of the Capucines. The impression of the place. Delille’s description. Address before the apparitions. Principal apparitions. A young woman transformed into a specter. A husband’s shade. The credulity of the human mind. Varied scenes. An article by Mercier of the Institute.

[C11-01 | source PDF 294–294]
On my return from Bordeaux I learned that the owner of the Pavillon de l’Échiquier, in league with a man named Aubée whom I had formerly employed in my exhibitions, had sought to take advantage of my absence from Paris to discover my secrets and exploit my invention for their own benefit. This reason alone would have made me seek other premises, even had I not also wanted somewhere more spacious and suitable. I found what I wanted in the former convent of the Capucines, near the Place Vendôme, called under Louis XIV the Place des Conquêtes or Place de Louis-le-Grand.

[C11-02 | source PDF 294–295]
A few details about this building and the nuns who inhabited it will doubtless not be thought out of place here. It was under Henri IV that the Duchess of Mercœur bought the Hôtel de Retz, known as the Hôtel du Pérou, in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, to establish the Capuchin nuns there. She thus fulfilled a vow whose execution her sister-in-law, Louise of Lorraine, wife of Henri III, had bequeathed to her. This convent stood directly opposite that of the Capuchin friars, to whom the Duchess of Mercœur wished the nuns to be subject. The pope granted her wish; the Capuchins became the exclusive directors of the new nuns and supplied brothers to collect alms for them.

[C11-03 | source PDF 295–295]
The congregation was small at first: twelve young women asked to be admitted to the new monastery. The Duchess of Mercœur gathered them in her mansion, and on the day of their installation eighty Capuchin friars went in procession to fetch them and lead them to their church. To each of the princesses attending the ceremony, the duchess presented a nun to escort. A crown of thorns had been placed on every nun’s head; thus, according to L’Estoile, they initially took the title Daughters of the Passion and always appeared crowned with thorns in processions.

[C11-04 | source PDF 295–296]
The austerity of these nuns, who formed a branch, as it were, of the female order of Saint Francis, far surpassed that of the Capuchin friars they seemed to imitate. Not only did they live, like them, solely on alms, but they always went barefoot, without clogs or sandals, throughout the convent precincts except the kitchen and garden. Their abstinence was such that they never ate animal food, even in mortal illness. They also practiced fasting, silence, solitude and other bodily mortifications that seem in some measure beyond the common strength of nature.

[C11-05 | source PDF 296–297]
They remained in their original establishment for about eighty years. Louis XIV had their convent demolished to build the square he laid out on the ruins of the former Hôtel Vendôme, but he built another monastery for the Capuchin nuns opposite that of the Feuillants, arranged so that the entrance to the church faced the square as seen from the spot where the Rue de Castiglione now stands. In place of those magnificent rows of arcades there was then only a narrow, dark passage, called the Passage des Feuillants, where two people could not have walked abreast. As for the position of the Capucines church, the clearest idea of it is obtained by imagining the church of Saint-Roch blocking the Rue de la Paix, its steps projecting toward the Place Vendôme. The Stamp Office, first assigned to the manufacture of assignats, is only one end of this convent, suppressed in 1790. [C11-N1]

[C11-06 | source PDF 297–298]
The church contained several tombs. From the demolished convent they had transferred the heart of the Duke of Mercœur, brought from Lorraine, and the body of Queen Louise, brought from Moulins. In the chapel of Saint Ovide stood the tombs of the Créqui family [C11-N2] and that of the Marquis de Louvois, the work of Girardon. The Marquise de Pompadour, who died at Versailles on April 15, 1764, also had her tomb in this church, beside that of her daughter, Alexandrine Le Normand d’Étioles.

[C11-07 | source PDF 298–299]
It will readily be understood that, though philosophical ideas ought to raise the mind above the involuntary fear that phantoms can inspire, the effect of the spectacle required the apparitions to spread a kind of religious terror, at least while they lasted. I could therefore have chosen no more suitable place than a vast abandoned chapel in the midst of a cloister. Not only did the building’s former purpose create in people’s minds a disposition favorable to contemplation, but the memory of the tombs expelled from this refuge, as they had been from every temple and convent, and seen heaped by the hundred on the steps outside, heightened this first impression in harmony with the ancient belief in shades. They seemed, in a sense, to emerge from real sepulchers and to wish to hover around the mortal remains they had animated and which were thus surrendered to profanation. That philosophy should be able to break the yoke of every superstition and destroy its visible power by exposing the secret artifices and deceptive appearances that strengthen it is doubtless a noble goal, toward which new advances are made every day. But it will never be in man’s power to forbid his imagination those dark and mysterious thoughts of a future covered by an impenetrable veil, which will not let him insult without remorse the cult of the dead, among whom his inevitable place is assigned. Thus the Abbé Delille seems, in these fine lines, to have portrayed a setting so well suited to my kind of apparitions…

[C11-08 | source PDF 299–299]
Beneath these holy porticoes, where austere virgins
Once, like those flames, those solitary lamps
Whose mournful gleams keep watch within the holy place,
Pale, kept vigil, burned and wasted away for God,
Holy contemplation and peaceful innocence
Still seem to dwell in the silence of these places.
The moss upon these walls, this dome, this tower,
The arches of this long cloister that daylight cannot pierce,
The altar steps worn down by prayer,
These darkened windows, this deep and shadowed sanctuary,
Where hearts, perhaps, unhappy in secret,
Complained of their bonds to the unbending altar,
And for memories still too full of charm
Stole a few tears away from Religion;
Everything speaks, everything moves us in this sacred dwelling.
There, wandering in reverie amid the solitude,
Sometimes, at the decline of a dark day, you might believe
You heard the shade of a weeping Héloïse moan.

[C11-09 | source PDF 299–300]
After several turns calculated to alter the impression retained from the profane noise of a great city, after passing through the square cloisters of the old convent, decorated with fantastic paintings, and crossing my cabinet of physics, visitors came to a door of antique form, covered with hieroglyphs, which seemed to announce the entrance to the mysteries of Isis. They then found themselves in a dark place hung with black, dimly lit by a sepulchral lamp, where only a few mournful images indicated its purpose. Profound calm, absolute silence and sudden isolation on leaving a noisy street were like the prelude to an imagined world. Already a contemplative mood was taking hold; every face was grave, almost somber, and people spoke only in whispers. I then stepped forward and forestalled superstitious impressions in roughly these terms:

[C11-10 | source PDF 300–300]
“What will take place before your eyes in a moment, gentlemen, is no frivolous spectacle. It is intended for the thinking man, for the philosopher who likes to lose himself for a moment with Sterne among the tombs.

[C11-11 | source PDF 300–301]
“Moreover, a spectacle that teaches man the strange effects of the imagination when it combines vigor with disorder is useful to him. I mean the terror inspired by shades, magical signs, spells and the occult operations of magic: a terror almost everyone has experienced in the tender age of prejudice, and which some retain even in the mature age of reason.

[C11-12 | source PDF 301–301]
“People consult the magician because man, borne along by the swift torrent of days, looks anxiously both at the waters carrying him and at the distance he has traveled. He would like to extend his sight to the farthest limits of his course, question the mirror of the future and see at a glance the whole chain of his existence.

[C11-13 | source PDF 301–302]
“The love of the marvelous, which we seem to receive from nature, would suffice to explain our credulity. In life man is always guided by nature like a child by leading strings. He thinks he walks alone, but nature directs his steps; she inspires in him that sublime desire to prolong his existence even when his course is finished. Among the first children of men, it was initially a sacred and religious belief that the spirit, the breath, did not perish with them; that this light, airy substance of ourselves loved to draw near the places it had loved. This consoling idea dried the tears of a wife, of an unhappy lover, and it was for friendship that the first shade appeared.”

[C11-14 | source PDF 302–302]
The thoughts I expressed in these introductory remarks, though circling around the same subject, varied frequently. I shall quote this other address:

[C11-15 | source PDF 302–303]
“The experiments about to take place before your eyes should interest philosophy. Here it may see the history of the human mind’s wanderings, and that history is well worth the political history of certain nations. The two great moments in a person’s existence are the entry into life and the departure from it. Everything that happens to him may be considered as lying between two black, impenetrable veils covering these two moments, which no one has yet lifted. Thousands of generations stand before these black veils, torches in hand, striving to guess what may lie on the other side. Poets, philosophers and founders of states have painted this future in their dreams in brighter or darker colors, according to whether the sky above their heads was cloudier or more serene. Many impostors have exploited this general curiosity to astonish an imagination saddened by uncertainty about the future. But the most mournful silence reigns beyond this funeral crape; and to supply what was lacking in that silence, which said so much to the imagination, the magi, the sibyls and the priests of Memphis employed the illusions of an unknown art, some of whose means I shall try to unfold before your eyes.

[C11-16 | source PDF 303–304]
“To feel how important the art of apparitions could be among the ancients, you would have to transport yourselves to the times, circumstances and places in which they occurred. Imagine a sensitive woman who has lost the object of her affection. See her led by the hand of an old man, a venerable priest. After a thousand turns she reaches the midst of the pyramids or the catacombs. There, surrounded by images of death, alone with night and her imagination, she awaits the apparition of the person she cherishes. What an illusion for an imagination prepared in this way! You will observe that in the mysteries of initiation there was only a single apparition. If I sought only to inspire terror in you, I would proceed quite differently. You would be admitted one at a time, because the people around you paralyze your imagination by their presence and their remarks, and the sole object offered to your view would appear only amid lightning and thunder. The aim of phantasmagoria is to familiarize you with extraordinary objects. I have shown you specters; I shall now make familiar shades appear.”

[C11-17 | source PDF 304–305]
This last sentence shows that I sometimes kept the second part of this address for the interval that divided the apparitions into two series. As soon as I stopped speaking, the antique lamp suspended above the spectators’ heads went out, plunging them into profound obscurity, into dreadful darkness. The sound of rain, thunder and the funeral bell summoning the shades from their tombs was followed by the piercing tones of the glass harmonica; the sky opened, but lightning streaked across it in every direction. Far in the distance a point of light seemed to rise: a figure, small at first, took shape, then approached with slow steps, seeming to grow at every step. Soon, enormous in size, the phantom advanced right before the spectator’s eyes and, just as he was about to cry out, vanished with unimaginable speed. At other times specters emerged fully formed from an underground vault and appeared unexpectedly. The shades of great men crowded around a boat and crossed back over the Styx; then, fleeing the light of heaven a second time, they gradually receded and lost themselves in the immensity of space. Sad, solemn, comic, graceful and fantastic scenes mingled together, and some event of the day generally formed the principal apparition. “Robespierre,” said the Courrier des Spectacles, [C11-N3] “comes out of his tomb and tries to rise… lightning strikes and reduces both the monster and his tomb to dust. Beloved shades come to soften the picture: Voltaire, Lavoisier and J. J. Rousseau appear in turn. Diogenes, lantern in hand, seeks a man and, in order to find one, passes, as it were, through the rows, impolitely giving the ladies a fright at which each of them laughs. Such are the effects of optics that everyone thinks he can touch these approaching objects with his hand.”

[C11-18 | source PDF 305–306]
“Nothing could be offered,” said another writer, “more magical or ingenious than the experiment that ends the phantasmagoria. Here is its conception: amid chaos, from the heart of the lightning and storms, a brilliant star rises, bearing at its center the characters: 18 Brumaire. Soon the clouds disperse and reveal the peacemaker. He comes to offer an olive branch to Minerva, who accepts it; but she makes a wreath of it and places it on the head of the French hero. Needless to say, this ingenious allegory is always received with enthusiasm.”

[C11-19 | source PDF 306–306]
Often, to strike a final blow, I ended the performances with this address:

[C11-20 | source PDF 306–306]
“I have taken you through all the phenomena of phantasmagoria; I have revealed to you the secrets of the priests of Memphis and the Illuminati; I have tried to show you what is most hidden in physics, those effects that seemed supernatural in the ages of credulity. But there remains one that is only too real. You who may have smiled at my experiments, beauties who have felt a few moments of terror, here is the only spectacle truly terrible, truly to be feared: men strong and weak, rulers and subjects, the credulous and atheists, women beautiful and ugly, here is the fate reserved for you; here is what you will one day be. Remember the phantasmagoria.”

[C11-21 | source PDF 306–306]
At this point the light returned, and in the middle of the room could be seen the skeleton of a young woman standing on a pedestal.

[C11-22 | source PDF 306–307]
Perhaps it will be thought that I should have spoken in the opposite way and tried to strengthen the soul against the inward anguish caused by the mere thought of the final moment; but nature would have spoken louder than I. Writers, and even artists, have in any case been too often reproached for continually concealing nature’s expression and openly making her lie. How few men do not think, like Frederick the Great:

[C11-23 | source PDF 307–307]
That one moment of happiness is worth a thousand years in history!

[C11-24 | source PDF 307–307]
And, like Achilles, that the most wretched condition during life is preferable to the finest renown after death!

[C11-25 | source PDF 307–308]
If to the details I have just given are added those of the most varied experiments in physics, and above all the most striking galvanic experiments, a complete idea of one of my performances will be obtained. When I restored very rapid movements, agile leaps, a remarkable responsiveness, a kind of life, so to speak, to an animal dead for several hours, dead for a day, I took care to warn my audience not to yield to that deceptive hope, which the imagination would seize on so eagerly, that resurrection might be possible. “Everything touched by the finger of death,” I told them, “is irrevocably condemned to nothingness, or at least to the decomposition of its original form. But science, making new advances every day, sometimes through human genius and sometimes through the benefits of chance, would also supply the impostor with new means of deceiving credulous minds, had science not become a common inheritance and a field that all are allowed to explore.”

[C11-26 | source PDF 308–309]
I have said that the spectacle of phantasmagoria made a great impression. The public flocked to it, and its attendance for six consecutive years rewarded my research and began my fortune; but the impression was still more vivid on certain individuals than on the crowd. Objects that pass before our eyes interest us more particularly when they correspond to sensations we have experienced. Hence, no doubt, the difficulty of reconciling different judgments of the same facts in art. To move and astonish in all the arts, but especially in those that speak only to the imagination, one would need to know even the most secret feelings. Thus those who won great reputations by this means, the Mesmers, Cagliostros and Lavaters, never undertook the operations of their sciences except on people whose characters they had penetrated and in whom they had inspired the blindest confidence.

[C11-27 | source PDF 309–309]
Had charlatanism not always revolted me, how many examples I could have had of the weakness of the human mind and of the absolute dominion to which it can so easily be subjected; in short, of the ease with which audacity will always be able to arrogate to itself, in Voltaire’s words:

[C11-28 | source PDF 309–309]
That right a spacious mind, firm in its designs,
Holds over the coarse minds of common men.

[C11-29 | source PDF 309–309]
M. Sue, in a note to the work I have already cited, spoke thus of my cabinet and my experiments: “After enjoying there all that acoustics and physics have to offer of the most piquant kind, the doors of the phantasmagoria open. It is there that the enchanter of physics presents, without charlatanism, effects that are, so to speak, marvelous, and that a few centuries ago would have had him dragged alive to the stake, even while he maintained that he was no sorcerer.”

[C11-30 | source PDF 309–311]
I have all the less reason to doubt the fate M. Sue predicted for me, fortunately in the past, since in an age as enlightened as ours, and among the population most readily sharing in that enlightenment, I had great difficulty persuading people that I was not endowed with the gift of sorcery. Every day people came to ask me for some revelation of the future or information about the past. They insisted that I should be able to know what was happening at great distances, and it was not uncommon for visitors, after the first civilities, to begin with these words: “I should very much like you, sir, to tell me who robbed my house last night.” [C11-N4] As may be imagined, I did not keep them waiting for my remedy, though I cannot guarantee that it was always effective: it was to send them to the police.

[C11-31 | source PDF 311–313]
But far from being able to play the oracle in response to requests of this kind, I badly needed someone to act as a prophet and protect me from the many schemers, and people of a still worse sort, who managed to gain admission to my house. I do not deny that I carry distrust of strangers quite far, yet I have not always escaped their tricks. Here is one too crude for me to have fallen for, but it might be practiced more skillfully and is worth relating. One morning two well-looking Italians, respectably dressed, called on me. They opened the conversation with questions about the methods of phantasmagoria, asking whether some people thought me a sorcerer and applied to me to detect thefts. The one who spoke added that his friend possessed a means as singular as it was infallible for making such discoveries. I began to suspect some ulterior purpose. I showed curiosity to learn their secret and proposed that they try it at once on my own behalf, for a few days earlier a silver cup had disappeared from the anteroom. They then asked me for several keys, since not all were suitable for working the charm. They laid them crosswise, one after another, on the tip of an index finger and pronounced the names of several people, reciting aloud for each a verse from the Psalms of David. The moment the guilty person’s name was spoken with this accompaniment of sacred text, the key was supposed to turn by itself. I would have laughed heartily at this impudent juggling had I not been trying to fathom its purpose. After the furniture keys they tried those of the doors, and even proposed putting the front-door key to the test. It suddenly occurred to me that they were using this crude trick only to obtain impressions of the principal keys, one of them probably concealing wax for the purpose. False keys had become extraordinarily common at that time, and one heard nothing but accounts of robberies without broken doors or forced entry. I hastened to put an end to their stratagem and dismissed them abruptly. These men lacked skill; cleverer men, with more plausible appearances, might have succeeded. A warning to anyone who needs to guard against the fraud that, as I have often experienced, is directed above all at prominent artists whose brilliant success must have brought them a steady income.

[C11-32 | source PDF 313–314]
Young men, too, frequently came to ask me for the shades of their mistresses, women for those of their husbands, and young women especially for those of their mothers. As I listened to the account of their sorrows, I disabused them of their credulity. Yet my efforts failed before the exaltation of a woman whose husband I had known. He had been music master of the chapel at Versailles, and his wife was inconsolable at his death. She conceived the hope that I could make his shade appear before her; from then on it was a fixed idea that nothing could weaken. She accused me of taking pleasure in prolonging and increasing her grief by my refusal. I saw a woman on the point of losing her reason. I applied to the police office and asked permission to soften her sorrow by completing an illusion that could be dispelled only by realizing it. This permission was granted. I took pains to convince her that, if this evocation was possible, the power existed only to be used once. I drew her husband’s features from memory, certain that the spectator’s disordered imagination would do the rest. Indeed, scarcely had the shade appeared when she cried: “Oh, my husband! My dear husband! I see you again… It is you; stay, stay, do not leave me so soon.” The shade had drawn close before her eyes. She tried to rise, but it vanished; she remained speechless, then shed abundant tears. Her grief was more tender. She thanked me with great feeling, saying she was certain that her husband still heard and saw her, and that this would be a sweet consolation all her life.

[C11-33 | source PDF 314–316]
The incidents just related show how far the imagination can be led astray [C11-N5] and confirm this passage from M. Salverte’s book on the Occult Sciences: “In Europe, and for longer than one might be inclined to believe, there have been men who needed only audacity or an overriding motive to present themselves to their admirers as endowed with supernatural power. Suppose such men possessed the one thing they lacked: then, far from being confined to amusing a few idle spectators, their art, kept in more respected hands and directed toward a less futile aim, commands the adoration of those whose laughter it once excited and suffices to explain miracles as numerous as they are imposing.”

[C11-34 | source PDF 316–316]
To complete what I had to say about phantasmagoria, besides explaining its methods, I believe I should place here the series of principal subjects I presented in it. I am not the author of them all; and as most offer wit, grace, strangeness or memories, the reader will doubtless find some pleasure in looking through this

[C11-35 | source PDF 316–316]
LITTLE PHANTASMAGORIC REPERTORY

[C11-36 | source PDF 316–317]
The Dream, or the Nightmare. A young woman dreams of fantastic scenes. The demon of jealousy presses an iron anvil against her breast and holds a dagger suspended above her heart. A hand armed with scissors cuts the fatal thread; the dagger falls and he drives it in. But Love comes to remove it and heals the wounds with rose petals.

[C11-37 | source PDF 317–317]
The Death of Lord Littleton. Lord Littleton was dining with a few friends. Suddenly he asks whether they have seen the phantom that has just appeared to him with these words: At midnight you will die. His friends tease him about this vision, but his imagination has been struck. They try to distract him and, without his knowledge, put the clock forward to show him that the predicted hour has not proved fatal. Littleton leaves, still troubled by his presentiment. He returns home and sees that midnight has not yet struck; midnight strikes, and he dies.

[C11-38 | source PDF 317–317]
THE PRESENTATION

[C11-39 | source PDF 317–317]
Littleton is at table between two people. A phantom; the clock strikes seven. A voice is heard: At midnight you will die. Littleton falls back into his chair and the phantom disappears. Littleton’s torments and anxieties…

[C11-40 | source PDF 317–318]
…A bed is seen. A few will-o’-the-wisps flutter about. The phantom of the previous night, or Death, lifts the latch of the door, enters, approaches the bed’s canopy and opens the curtains. These words are heard: Littleton, wake up. Littleton rises partway; the clock strikes. The same voice: The hour has come. At the last stroke, thunder, a rain of fire; Littleton falls and everything disappears.

[C11-41 | source PDF 318–318]
The Pilgrimage of Saint Nicholas. In France this saint granted lovers to neglected girls. A simple shepherdess also brings her prayers, but only an old man is left, whom she seems to disdain.

[C11-42 | source PDF 318–318]
Preparations for the Witches’ Sabbath. A clock strikes midnight. A witch, her nose in a book, raises her arm three times. The moon descends, takes its place before her and turns blood-red; the witch strikes it with her wand and cuts it in two. She begins raising her left hand again; at the third time, cats, bats and skulls flutter about with will-o’-the-wisps. In the middle of a magic circle these words can be read: DEPARTURE FOR THE SABBATH. A woman arrives astride a broom and rises into the air; a demon, an Incroyable dandy on a broom, and many figures follow one another. Two monks appear with the cross, then a hermit, to perform an exorcism, and everything disperses.

[C11-43 | source PDF 318–319]
Diogenes with His Tub. Alexander and Diogenes. Diogenes comes out of his tub with a lantern and seeks a man.

[C11-44 | source PDF 319–319]
Macbeth. The king arrives at Macbeth’s house and is received with the respectful demonstrations of an obedient subject. Macbeth’s wife, driven by ambition, urges him to kill the king; he is undecided. His wife goes to find three witches, who appear and promise him the throne. He hesitates no longer and kills the king. Appearance of the avenging shade and punishment of Macbeth.

[C11-45 | source PDF 319–319]
Young Burying His Daughter. The sound of a belfry; a view of a cemetery lit by the moon. Young carries his daughter’s lifeless body. He enters an underground vault where a series of rich tombs is revealed. Young knocks on the first; a skeleton appears and he flees. He returns and works with a pickax: a second apparition and fresh terror. He knocks at the third tomb; a shade rises and asks him: What do you want of me? “A tomb for my daughter,” Young replies. The shade recognizes him and gives up its place. Young lays his daughter there. Scarcely has the lid closed when the soul is seen rising toward heaven; Young prostrates himself and remains in ecstasy…

[C11-46 | source PDF 320–320]
The Birth of Pastoral Love. A young village girl plants a rosebush. Nature warms it with her torch and brings a shepherd to water it. The rosebush grows and shelters turtledoves. Love emerges from a rose and, in gratitude, unites the two lovers.

[C11-47 | source PDF 320–320]
The History of Love. He is born among the Graces. Hope rocks his cradle. Pleasure lulls him to sleep. Beauty awakens him. Folly leads him. Inconstancy leads him astray. Fidelity brings him back.

[C11-48 | source PDF 320–321]
The Temptation of Saint Anthony. A church is seen; Saint Anthony comes out of it, abandoning its pious ceremonies for an even more austere life. The church disappears and Saint Anthony is in the desert. It is the demon who has maliciously led him to this place, where he shows him a cave, a pallet and the implements of mortification. Anthony kneels in the middle of the cave; Cupids appear and threaten him. They take away his crown of thorns and his cross; a demon pulls his pig by the ear. A Cupid holds a scourge in one hand, with these words: Here are his weapons, and in the other a quiver full of arrows, with the inscription: Here are ours. Temptations of every kind follow one another. A kind of sorceress stands beside a vase and draws different objects from it: a flag, glory; two swords, power, riches, pleasures, and so on. To impress the holy hermit by the force of example, a sort of pope is seen, doubtless a Borgia, with a miter and a crozier. A devil removes his miter, and a half-naked woman undresses him. Saint Anthony replies only with these words: Begone, Satan. But the alarm bell sounds; the Cupids set fire to the hermitage, and a young beauty leads away the solitary, his brow wreathed in garlands.

[C11-49 | source PDF 321–321]
Petrarch and Laura at the Fountain of Vaucluse.

[C11-50 | source PDF 321–321]
Procession and Sacrifice of the Druids Who Gathered Mistletoe from the Oak.

[C11-51 | source PDF 321–321]
The Shade of Samuel Appearing to Saul.

[C11-52 | source PDF 321–321]
David Fully Armed beside the Giant Goliath.

[C11-53 | source PDF 321–321]
Proserpine and Pluto on Their Throne.

[C11-54 | source PDF 321–321]
Orpheus Losing Eurydice Again.

[C11-55 | source PDF 321–322]
A Pretty Woman in a White Dress, in Relief. Little by little she is lit from behind and finally transforms into a skeleton.

[C11-56 | source PDF 322–322]
The Three Graces Transformed into Skeletons.

[C11-57 | source PDF 322–322]
The Dance of the Fairies.

[C11-58 | source PDF 322–322]
A Venus Who Coaxes a Hermit.

[C11-59 | source PDF 322–322]
Offering to Love. Flames rise on an altar; a Cupid brings a young man, and Venus appears on the altar. The young man and the Cupid gradually disappear; then the young man is seen kneeling. Venus grants him a lover; they clasp one another in their arms and disappear. The same Cupid returns with an old man. A rosebush at the foot of the altar withers, Venus and the Cupid turn into skeletons, and the old man descends with them into the earth.

[C11-60 | source PDF 322–323]
The Monastery of Saint Bruno. In the monastery of which Saint Bruno was superior, they wished to canonize a monk who had long been considered a saint. One day, as they were gathered around his tomb to invoke him, the tomb opens, flames issue from it and the monk appears. He confesses that, far from deserving sainthood, he has always behaved very badly and is damned forever. He disappears amid demons.

[C11-61 | source PDF 323–323]
Alcestis. Admetus, the husband of Alcestis, is ill. Alcestis consults the oracle and learns that her husband will die unless someone sacrifices himself in his place. Alcestis resolves to die for her husband. Hercules arrives and learns of this generous sacrifice. He arms himself with his club, flies to the underworld, fights and chains the dog Cerberus, carries off Alcestis and restores her to her husband.

[C11-62 | source PDF 323–323]
The Head of Medusa, as Terrifying as Ever.

[C11-63 | source PDF 323–323]
The Bleeding Nun. A nun, the victim of her tender feelings, returns to hover through a cloister where her lover practiced his devotions.

[C11-64 | source PDF 323–323]
Charon Carries the Soul of Admiral Nelson in His Boat to the Elysian Fields.

[C11-65 | source PDF 323–324]
The Apotheosis of Héloïse. First a brightly lit coffin of pure silver is seen. An angel descends from heaven and lays a rose on it… At once the coffin disappears and a young woman is seen, her light garments of the most brilliant white; her arms are crossed on her breast, with a cross in her hand. Gradually she moves, stands up, draws back on her knees to thank heaven, and finally rises and disappears.

[C11-66 | source PDF 324–324]
A Gravedigger with a Lantern Searches for Treasure in an Abandoned Temple. He opens a tomb and finds a skeleton whose head is still adorned with a jewel. As he is about to remove it, the dead man moves and opens his mouth; the gravedigger falls dead from fright. A rat had lodged in the skull.

[C11-67 | source PDF 324–324]
The Dance of the Sorcerers. (The details are in another chapter.)

[C11-68 | source PDF 324–324]
Mahomet’s Pigeons, the Houris, the Wine. Mahomet appears surrounded by rays, with his motto: PLEASURE IS MY LAW. The rays fade. To his left is a table covered with bottles of wine, and above it: HERE IS EVIL. To the right, a pretty woman: HERE IS GOOD; CHOOSE IF YOU CAN. A Turk seems very undecided, and while he hesitates these objects disappear. Pigeons flutter about and come to peck at Mahomet’s ear.

[C11-69 | source PDF 325–325]
SUBJECTS SUPPLIED BY M. DE SALLABÉRY

[C11-70 | source PDF 325–325]
“I could not,” wrote M. de Sallabéry, whose learning, as varied as it was sound, I have already described, “resist the desire to supply a few subjects for phantasmagoria myself. M. Robertson will choose what he likes.

[C11-71 | source PDF 325–325]
“The Witch of Endor.

[C11-72 | source PDF 325–325]
“The appearance of the three witches to Macbeth; that of Banquo’s shade to the same man. There are two superb English engravings of these two subjects.

[C11-73 | source PDF 325–325]
“The allegory of Envy torn by serpents. (By giving movement to these reptiles, one would offer a frightening and moral picture.)

[C11-74 | source PDF 325–325]
“The death agony of Ugolino and his family, after Dante.

[C11-75 | source PDF 325–325]
“Saint Dominic the Armored, obliging the devil to hold a candle-end for him, burning his fingers all the while, until the saint has finished his paternosters.

[C11-76 | source PDF 325–325]
“The demon of storms as he appears to Vasco da Gama in Camões.

[C11-77 | source PDF 325–325]
“The opening of Pandora’s box and all the personified delights that emerge from it.

[C11-78 | source PDF 326–326]
“The Dance of Death, after Holbein. Citizen Robertson can consult the engravings at the Bibliothèque nationale.

[C11-79 | source PDF 326–326]
“There, I think, is an assortment, with not a word to laugh at in it, and so on…

[C11-80 | source PDF 326–326]
“Valete et plaudite; ego Calepinus recensui. [Farewell and applaud; I, Calepinus, have reviewed the list.]”

[C11-81 | source PDF 326–326]
S*******

[C11-82 | source PDF 326–326]
All these subjects were chosen with taste and were very suitable for phantasmagoria. Some were performed and gave pleasure.

[Original illustration: chapter-eleven-apparition.png]
Original uncaptioned engraving before Mercier’s article, Volume I, printed p.304.

[C11-83 | source PDF 326–326]
Article by Mercier, of the Institute, on Phantasmagoria

[C11-84 | source PDF 326–327]
The philosopher does not reject this spectacle, which, through the play and struggle of shadow and light, places us between bodies and spirits and, so to speak, on the borders of another world. He does not reject it, especially at a time when the moralist feels more than ever the need to speak to the people of another life.

[C11-85 | source PDF 327–327]
Everything becomes the voice of truth when the most useful truths are forgotten or unrecognized.

[C11-86 | source PDF 327–327]
Darkness! Silence! Steady sounds of the resounding cymbal! What, then, is your power? The mind feels it, acknowledges it, obeys it; it expands into infinity. Time and space then cease to exist for it. I feel within me the harmony of the visible and invisible worlds. Yes, this august darkness is the key to another world. When I am lost in this lightless space, my thought flies to the single center and attaches itself there.

[C11-87 | source PDF 327–327]
There is a religious enchantment that seizes us when we read Young. Here my soul is blessed with solemn thoughts; the trappings of the tomb are no longer fearful! Here is death: it refreshes my thought. No, I shall not always be chained to this wretched world.

[C11-88 | source PDF 327–327]
Unbelievers fear another life, either because they dread the just and avenging Being or because they lack the sacred fire of hope.

[C11-89 | source PDF 328–328]
Guilty one, do not hope for nothingness; there is no nothingness.

[C11-90 | source PDF 328–328]
I would rather see hell than total destruction. Demons frighten me less than the mute horror of the bare abyss. There is another world at Robertson’s.

[C11-91 | source PDF 328–328]
It is there, just as it is dreamed every night. The dream! Who has fathomed the dream? You sleep; the divine rod strikes you, or mercy consoles you. It is in dreams that we live; it is there that our soul enjoys all its authority over nature.

[C11-92 | source PDF 328–328]
I laugh at tombs; they are only changing rooms now. The Eternal! He has bound the heavens to the earth; he has bound the earth to the heavens. The river of thought: where are its banks? O world, O world, what are you? Do I touch you, or are you only a shadow? When will our senses learn to judge their own illusions? Here I fall into an indefinite dream as these changing, moving, airy phantoms pass before my eyes; and so everything passes, will pass and has passed.

[C11-93 | source PDF 328–328]
And I say to my spirit: Give yourself no more rest. When you have reached the West, return to the East to begin a new course; when you have struck the North, turn back toward the South.

[C11-94 | source PDF 329–329]
The priests of every age have disfigured great truths. Sole possessors of the occult sciences, they have, to the world’s misfortune, mingled false apparitions and the physics of miracles with ideas emanating from heaven. To make themselves absolute sovereigns, they have taken sovereigns as their viceroys in every climate. Sometimes they spoke through the mouths of hollow statues; sometimes, invisible and silent, they set fireproof priestesses trembling on their tripods, making them seem all aflame through the secret of pyromancy.

[C11-95 | source PDF 329–329]
Thus the secrets of physics soon enveloped mortals in the spells of magicians. It is therefore useful and philosophical to repeat these deceptive means by which shades were evoked, so as to make the priests’ artifice and the diviners’ imposture palpable to the eyes of fear. Superstition interposed itself between man’s sensibility and his reason. And what would be the largest volume in our libraries? The history of priestly frauds.

[C11-96 | source PDF 329–330]
Physics has avenged itself for the shameful degradation to which it had been condemned. The mysteries of initiation in the Egyptian temples, suddenly revealed in broad daylight, make us smile at our credulity. Physicists have set us back on the road to the most beautiful truth by explaining the phenomena of light, so long unknown, and showing us the struggles of fire and darkness, struggles subtle, ingenious, profound and manifold.

[C11-97 | source PDF 330–330]
But this physics, this incomprehensible light, connects with metaphysics: that is to say, it powerfully questions our thought, the thought that tells us there is yet another physics, another light than Robertson’s, in which what we call matter is no longer matter, in which that thick and baleful veil is no longer spread over truth. Collapse, deceptive sciences, disappear! The spirit is here.

[C11-98 | source PDF 330–330]
God is here; he wills that everything that speaks to you should be spiritual.

[C11-99 | source PDF 330–330]
Man has thought himself mortal because he found something mortal within him. Let him look into this deep darkness, where a point of light is about to burst forth: it is the emblem of another sun illuminating another universe.

[C11-100 | source PDF 330–330]
Lovers of immortality! You who have, as it were, a special sense, a privileged sense, come here, for thus our soul shines in the shadows of death; but the darkness cannot comprehend the light.

[C11-101 | source PDF 331–331]
Worshippers of the Divinity, place your soul beyond the darkness. The wicked man’s shade appears; he wanders, thinks himself alone, believes he has escaped heavenly punishment. Suddenly clouds surround him; lightning furrows them in long ribbons of fire, following one another ever more rapidly. A brighter flash dazzles you: the thunderbolt has fallen and reduced Robespierre and the atheist’s sepulcher to dust.

[C11-102 | source PDF 331–331]
When the voice of religion is silent, God, who does not allow instruction to perish and who speaks to man through every part of creation, has willed that catoptrics should speak in our day, and that it should be here below a blurred image of the images and depths of the world of the mind. Invisible powers, respect the human soul.

[C11-103 | source PDF 331–331]
Poor unbelievers! Feeble beings! The one who gives life to all beings has been regarded by coarse, material man as having neither life nor existence. Wicked ones! Hide yourselves, sink ever deeper into darkness: you will still exist there.

[C11-104 | source PDF 331–332]
I love to see the image of a great man, a friend, a virtuous father evoked. The one I see is not his, but it exists. It is for my thought to seize it; my thought seizes it… The great man, my friend, is not dead.

[C11-105 | source PDF 332–332]
This young nun, wearing a wimple that rivals the lilies of her face in whiteness, comes with slow steps from the far end of a cloister walk. The sorrows of her mortal life are imprinted on her face, but her heavenly life has not been destroyed; that calm brow already tastes repose and will soon taste happiness. The sufferer contemplates this figure, which sheds around it all the rays of a new and better existence. He gathers his thoughts, he hopes, he is transported into eternal regions. While atheism extinguishes everything beneath its icy hands and moves ever farther both from the merciful God and from the ascending line, would anyone wish to annihilate these melancholy, revealing, inspiring pictures, and even the words of language that have a secret bond with God and immortality?

Original notes

[C11-N1 | source PDF 297–297]
The room for my phantasmagoric experiments, with all kinds of figures painted in black on its walls, has remained almost intact. It was not without emotion that I had occasion to see this for myself a few days ago.

[C11-N2 | source PDF 297–297]
During the Duke of Créqui’s embassy to Rome in 1665, Pope Alexander VII presented him with a skeleton exhumed from the Catacombs. This body was honored with the name of Saint Ovide, martyr; on what evidence we are not told. The duke gave it to the convent of the Capucines, who displayed it every year in their church. Large crowds of the faithful gathered, followed by many merchants; thus arose the fair in the Place Vendôme, with its cafés and entertainments. One detail bears witness to the visitors’ ardent faith and extreme trust: very few noticed that the saint had two left feet, the right one having been lost on the journey from Rome to Paris.

[C11-N3 | source PDF 305–305]
Issue of 4 Ventôse, Year VIII.

[C11-N4 | source PDF 310–310]
I have successfully repeated, thanks to the aura of wonder with which phantasmagoria surrounded me, the old experiment of the Black Hen. If, for example, there is reason to suspect one of a household’s servants of theft, they are gathered in a dark place and told that, if innocent, they may safely pass their hands over a black hen standing in the shadows, but that only the guilty person, on touching it, will make it cry out. Naturally, all the innocent people pass their hands over the hen without hesitation, while the guilty person refrains. This stratagem exposes him, for the feathers are coated with lampblack; he is pressed and confesses. To this trap may be added that of a colonist who told his slaves that he was about to draw a parrot’s feather from the thief’s nose. The guilty person immediately raised his hand to it and was discovered.

[C11-N5 | source PDF 314–315]
Here is a very curious effect of the imagination that I find in a newspaper of Year II. Although the effect must be very well known, it is too closely connected with my subject for me to refrain from quoting it:

“A celebrated physicist, having written an excellent work on the effects of the imagination, wished to add experiment to theory. He therefore asked the minister for permission to prove his assertions on a criminal condemned to death. The minister agreed and had a notorious thief of distinguished birth handed over to him. Our scholar went to see him and said: ‘Sir, several people who take an interest in your family have, through repeated appeals, obtained the minister’s consent that you should not be exposed on a scaffold to the gaze of the populace. He has therefore commuted your sentence: you will be bled from all four limbs inside your prison, and you will not feel the anguish of death.’ Knowing that his sentence had been pronounced the day before, the criminal submitted to his fate, counting himself fortunate that his name would not be disgraced. He was taken to the designated place, where everything had been prepared in advance; his eyes were blindfolded and, at the agreed signal, after he had been tied to a table, he was lightly pricked on all four limbs. At the ends of the table four small fountains filled with lukewarm water had been arranged, flowing gently into tubs provided for the purpose.

“The victim, believing it was his blood, gradually grew faint. What sustained his error was the whispered conversation of two doctors stationed there expressly for the purpose. ‘What fine blood! It is a pity this man is condemned to die in this way, for he would have lived a long time.’ ‘Hush,’ said the other; then, approaching the first, he asked in a low voice, but so that the criminal could hear: ‘How much blood is there in the human body?’ ‘Twenty-four pounds. There are already about ten pounds here; this man is now beyond help.’ Then they gradually moved away and spoke more softly. The silence in the room and the sound of the fountains that continued to flow so weakened the poor wretch’s brain, although he was a man of strong constitution, that he slowly faded away and died without having lost a drop of blood.”

Editorial record

Capucines (nuns) and Capucins (friars) distinguished. Historical foundation, tomb and relic claims are preserved as source claims. The two notes on printed275 remain separate; the second gives1665, two left feet and a missing right foot.

The Delille extract retains all eighteen lines; the Frederick quotation retains its single line and the Voltaire extract its two lines, without invented rhyme. Both opening addresses, the interval explanation, the final skeleton address and the period newspaper quotations remain complete.

The black-hen ordeal and the story of the condemned prisoner supposedly killed by imagination remain attributed historical anecdotes, not validated scientific findings. The latter note continues over printed292–293 and is reproduced in full; twenty-four and ten pounds are the source’s figures. The account of the grieving widow and the claimed police permission are also Robertson’s account.

The complete repertory, including the separate Littleton performance scenario and Sallabéry’s suggestions, is retained. Littleton, the different timing in the narrative and scenario, the adapted Macbeth plot, and the Saint Bruno story are not silently reconciled with other versions. Ciel in the bed scene means its canopy. Incroyable is rendered Incroyable dandy; discipline in Saint Anthony’s temptation means a penitential scourge. Mythological names use their established English forms. Mahomet is retained as the period name in the narrator’s theatrical account; the captions and motto are not presented as factual statements of Islamic belief.

Sallabéry’s Latin closing is retained with a bracketed English translation; the asterisked signature remains. Calepinus is left as the Latin self-designation. The ironic gentillesses in the Pandora entry is rendered delights.

Mercier’s entire article is retained under its own heading; its religious interpretation and its portrayal of Robespierre as an atheist are Mercier’s claims, distinct from Robertson’s presentation. The final printed paragraph has grammatical disturbances: L’infortunée followed by Il, il transporte without se, and tandis que…voudrait-on. The English uses The sufferer, he is transported, and a final rhetorical question to preserve the apparent sense; the French transcription preserves the printed wording for checking. No substantive passage is omitted.

The uncaptioned tomb-apparition engraving on printed304 and the lyre-bearing figure tailpiece on printed310 are reproduced from the original scan without generated imagery.

Chapter XII

Vain efforts to guess the method of phantasmagoria. The lawsuit with Aubée. Phantasmagorias spread everywhere. Details of the method. Wandering phantoms.

[C12-01 | source PDF 333–333]
O imitatores, servum pecus! [O imitators, servile herd!] Horace must have expressed a very great truth in those words! How often that apostrophe has found application since it left his pen! Stage coups d’état or make wooden shoes: if there is anything new in the manner, arm yourself with a patent! Even then you will not be protected against the invasion of imitators. Everything capable of imitation will be imitated: that is the horoscope of the centuries to come. Men with any originality of mind, with ideas of their own, are very rare. They may be compared to a small number of vigorous tree trunks on which the rest of the industrious world vegetates in parasitic clusters.

[C12-02 | source PDF 333–335]
Since I have begun an attack on the servile herd, to use the Latin expression, why should I lose the opportunity of putting forward, along the way, an idea that may be useful? The decline of our great talents is attributed, with varying degrees of justification, to several causes. Would it be so unreasonable to see a very active one in the unlimited freedom of the small theaters to forestall the first performances of the finest works with little comic or serious pieces that rob their subjects of freshness in advance, blunt curiosity, weaken dramatic situations and certainly impair theatrical illusion? When the plays of Corneille, Racine and even Voltaire won brilliant successes, there did not exist, as there do today, half a dozen secondary theaters where society seeks lighter, less serious amusements, requiring little learning or elevation of soul and mind, but also less noble, less instructive and of no use in perfecting language, moral ideas or theatrical art. Man will always choose easy pleasures. Without a counterweight to this natural disposition, without some vigorous guidance to draw him away from his inclination, the genres whose primary quality is dignity can only continue to decline. Certainly I am far from claiming that the new genres established over the past fifty years should be put to death; but surely measures could be taken to prevent public favor from straying to the detriment of a brilliant part of our national glory.

[C12-03 | source PDF 335–336]
If these last reflections seem somewhat foreign to the subject I propose to treat in this chapter, they were prompted by an opening very much to the point. To the favor shown to imitation, or rather to the greed for making money from another person’s industry, I owed not only a very disagreeable lawsuit that greatly occupied the public, but the revelation of the means that produced my phantasmagoric illusions, which many people of society and several scholars had tried in vain to guess for eight years. A few people, it is true, of the kind always ready to disparage what they have not invented or cannot understand, and to overwhelm it with lofty disdain without even troubling to explain the supposed secrets, mere playthings for their intelligence, affected to compare my experiments to Chinese shadows and to see in them only the illusions of the magic lantern. Yet they admitted that audiences also applauded the phantoms’ true walking motion, instead of continual jolts and leaps; the likeness and living quality of the flesh; the skillful distribution of light and shade; the size and gradual shrinking of the specters; and finally their almost immediate approach before the spectators’ eyes, upon whom they seem to rush. Given such admissions, might it not show little modesty to refuse to find that the criticism, however partial and contemptuous, was amply compensated by its share of involuntary praise?

[C12-04 | source PDF 336–337]
The celebrated Delalande admitted more frankly that my apparitions involved a secret he could not penetrate, and which he expressed the keenest desire to know at least a hundred times. It is true that M. Delalande, to prove that nothing was harmful to man and to parody an English philosopher, once crunched a large spider in the midst of a numerous company and pretended to swallow it with pleasure. It is also true that he bequeathed his body to the medical dissecting theater, but his relatives refused to carry out that clause, wishing, as was said at the time, to spare him this final absurdity. Yet could not this supposed absurdity have been a remarkable tribute to the indispensable necessity of anatomy, and at the same time a consolation, a philosophical lesson addressed to the poor, whose aversion to hospitals often arises from the repugnance inspired by the dissection to which they see themselves already consigned after death? However that may be, fortunate is anyone who, in matters of science, can pride himself on flattering testimony from M. Delalande! This illustrious scholar very often came to tell me his conjectures about the means I employed, but he could not account for all my effects. I should certainly not have hesitated to explain them fully had my fortune, of which the daily influx of enthusiasts was beginning to give me well-founded hope, not rested on so simple a secret.

[C12-05 | source PDF 337–338]
How often M. Charles, a member of the Institute, expressed the same desire as M. Delalande! The simpler the method, the farther the physicists allowed their imaginations to lead them from it. They attributed this sudden recession and enlargement of objects to the effect of a concave mirror combined with the focus of a magnifying lens; all their trials revolved within that circle. But for eight years nothing was guessed, and they might have searched longer had it not been for the indiscretion of a servant I employed and the greed of an investor who wished to exploit that servant’s disloyalty.

[C12-06 | source PDF 338–339]
After I moved my establishment to the courtyard of the Capucines, and during the journey I made to take up the chair of physics in my department, the two Aubée brothers, whom I had employed in my exhibitions, installed themselves in the Pavillon de l’Échiquier, which I had just left, and, after abusing my confidence, boldly advertised themselves as my pupils. I hastened to disown in the best-known newspapers the glory they attributed to me and described their relations with me in the same terms I use here. Before making this declaration, however, I secured a patent, [C12-N1] something I had not thought of at all until then. Left to their own resources, these two individuals cut a sorry figure; but a bailiff-auctioneer named Clisorius joined one of them much later to revive the first establishment under the name of fantasmaparastasie. This Clisorius put money into the venture, and they began to make something of a show. Such artists certainly offered little formidable competition; on the contrary, theirs was disgraceful enough to make me fear that experiments to which I had attached my name, and whose perfection was their entire charm, would be lowered in public esteem. The interests of an art I loved so dearly, and to which I had sacrificed so many sleepless nights, joined to the praiseworthy desire to punish a breach of trust, allowed me no hesitation. By virtue of the rights my patent conferred on me before any judicial hearing, I requested that the exhibition of Aubée and Clisorius be sealed. This was done, and the seals remained until the case’s final disposition.

[C12-07 | source PDF 339–341]
Now that phantasmagoric experiments have been almost abandoned, one would hardly believe how much this lawsuit excited public curiosity. It was not only society people who crowded the hearings; enthusiasts and scholars attended them assiduously. The lawyers, appreciating all the advantages they could draw from a case on a subject that had aroused such lively interest, did not neglect the means of attracting a still larger audience. The curtain of phantasmagoria was drawn aside; the shades appeared in broad daylight; Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus took their seats in the justice of the peace’s court. People knew how the living walked and wished to learn how the dead traveled: they learned. Accustomed to seeing children take twenty years to become men, they burned to discover how little children, at first of scarcely perceptible size, reached the stature of picked grenadiers in less than one or two seconds: they were satisfied. Hell no longer had any wings backstage; in short, there was no longer a dark chamber. For proof of the stir this lawsuit caused, read this passage from a long letter to the Courrier des Spectacles on the Invisible Woman by a certain Auvray, who displays in two lines the profound learning of seven proper names and informs the public that old books by the Paracelsuses, Fluds, Digbys, Campanellas and Father Kirker exist. “Germany,” says this M. Auvray, the terror of shades and invisible women whom he tries to catch in the act, “Germany will see its Gassners again, Ireland its Grétérichs, Spain its Saludadors, England its Windigs; France has its Leo the Jew and is promised its Mesmer… The love of the marvelous, so fashionable today, foretells a rapid fortune for them. Our courts themselves are occupied with these visions, and the lawsuit of the shades of Robertson and Clisorius is honored with an audience never seen in such numbers at cases most closely affecting citizens’ civil status.” Let us pity the citizens who, unlike M. Auvray, do not have their Paracelsus, Digby, Flud, Campanella and Kirker sufficiently present to memory to understand that shades do not deserve to set so many bodies in motion; and let us use his ill humor to establish a fact: the presence of a distinguished audience at the phantasmagoria trial.

[C12-08 | source PDF 341–342]
Even the most complete victory in court was a loss to me once the means I had hitherto kept secret were divulged. The judge wisely ordered the two machines to be produced and examined, to verify the methods of those accused of infringement. The affair then dragged on so long that the proceedings lapsed. In truth, I no longer had an interest in having the question decided, since my patent was due to expire shortly afterward. The case even benefited me in one respect: the stir it caused and the accounts published in all the newspapers brought crowds of spectators to my performances. As for my opponents, their door remained shut and their shades were eclipsed, for they never reappeared; and on the door of the fantasmaparastasie, as a witty journalist remarked, [C12-N2] one could have placed the inscription that appeared on the gate of the cemetery of Saint-Sulpice:

[C12-09 | source PDF 342–342]
HAS ULTRA METAS
REQUIESCUNT
BEATAM SPEM EXPECTANTES. [C12-N3]

[C12-10 | source PDF 342–344]
From that moment phantasmagoria became very common. Performed by phantasmagorists of every class, it made Paris resemble the Elysian Fields in the number of shades that inhabited it; only a slightly metaphorical imagination was needed to turn the Seine into the River Lethe. For the phantasmagorists gathered chiefly on its banks, and there was not a quay, as Ducray-Duménil says somewhere, that did not offer a little phantom at the end of a very dark corridor, at the top of a winding staircase. Ghost machines even became an article of trade for Paris and London; the Dumotiez brothers and the English opticians shipped several thousand throughout Europe. Every minor enthusiast for physics in every country had his phantasmagoria. I have found these boxes on carriages, made in Paris, deep in Russia, at Odessa, from the borders of Siberia to the farthest end of Spain, even at Ceuta. These devices, which require some knowledge of physical theory and some instruction, were for the most part useless pieces of furniture in their purchasers’ hands, and even worthless in their eyes once they discovered the impossibility of producing the effects I presented. However simple a general method may be, experience, constant research, the means suggested by a complete mastery of a science, and the costly trials to which new ideas are subjected always give the person possessing these advantages a superiority of execution and a variety of results that mere imitators cannot approach. The theory of phantasmagoria I am about to explain, several optical experiments, and a few letters from an enlightened amateur, reserved for the end of this volume, will show that things thought easy once discovered are nevertheless not attained by their inventor without great difficulties.

[C12-11 | source PDF 344–345]
Yet I wish to confirm what I said about imitators at the beginning of this chapter with another fact from my own experience. It is doubtless unknown that I was the first to attempt the execution of a panorama in France; a culpable indiscretion alone prevented me from pursuing the enterprise. This was at the very time when all Paris was flocking to my experiments in the former convent of the Capucines. M. Richard Chenevix, of whom I have spoken elsewhere, came to see me one day on his arrival from London. He told me that M. Barker, a painter of that city and an acquaintance of his, had conceived the project of making a picture without an end, which would therefore embrace the whole horizon. The idea struck me as admirable. As I tried to indicate and develop the effects that might be produced by this means, I expressed my astonishment that, although painting dated from so remote an age, nothing similar had yet been imagined anywhere in the world. I did not think the execution of such a work beyond my courage, and I had enough confidence in my good fortune not to doubt its success. I drew up my plan and immediately made a cardboard model of the enclosure within which the picture’s perspective would be contained. I was mistaken only in the diameter, but actual construction would have made me recognize and correct that error. A painter had to be found to whom I would not fear to communicate my ideas. I explained them to M. Fontaine, still living today, and we resolved to draw the view of Paris from the pavilion of the Tuileries palace.

[C12-12 | source PDF 345–346]
All that remained was to find suitable ground for the building. It was before my eyes: the former garden of the convent of the Capucines itself. M. Petit, director of the Jardin d’Apollon then established there, agreed to lease me the part I needed for a very long term. Everything was therefore going as well as possible when two Englishmen, one of them M. Robert Fulton, stopped my work by showing me the patent application they had made for the same object. I was then completely ignorant of the formalities by which ownership of an invention or an importation was secured; or, to put it better, I was working as a true artist, never imagining that laws existed or that regulations were needed to protect oneself from intrigue and greed.

[C12-13 | source PDF 346–346]
I had devoted eight months to developing my plans; this labor, too, proved fruitless. Robert Fulton’s private connections with certain people in whom I had, perhaps indiscreetly, placed my confidence sufficiently indicated where the betrayal, for it was a real one, might have originated. Nevertheless, I have never believed that a certain M. John Walker, whom I frequently and kindly received in my house, could have committed an indiscretion so harmful to my interests. In any case, the first panorama rose on the very site I had chosen, and M. Fontaine, still living, I repeat, painted its first picture on the very subject we had resolved to undertake. Under him M. Bouton, then still young, tried his hand in this field and already gave promise of the brilliant successes he later achieved. But let us leave the panoramas of which I dreamed and turn to the method of phantasmagoria that I made real.

[C12-14 | source PDF 347–347]
The Methods of Phantasmagoria

[C12-15 | source PDF 347–347]
A room sixty to eighty feet long and no more than twenty-four feet wide must be available; it should be painted or hung in black. The end of the room intended for the apparatus requires twenty-five feet of its length. This part will be separated from the public by a tightly stretched white curtain of fine percale, which must at first be hidden from the spectators by a curtain of black cloth. This percale curtain, of at least twenty square feet, on which all the images are to be cast, will be coated with a varnish made of white starch and selected gum arabic, to make it slightly translucent.

[C12-16 | source PDF 347–347]
The floor of the part reserved for the experiments should be raised four to five feet above ground level so that the apparitions are visible from every corner of the room.

[C12-17 | source PDF 347–348]
The principal apparatus is the fantascope, a wooden box two feet in every dimension, like AA, painted white inside and black outside. Access is through two or three doors I, covered with black draperies so that no light can be seen outside when they are open.

[Original illustration: chapter-twelve-fantascope.png]
The fantascope. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.326. Lettering is reproduced as engraved; the prose and drawing are not perfectly consistent.

[C12-18 | source PDF 348–349]
At the front, at I, is a circular opening of four inches, to which is fitted a wooden tube D, with an internal diameter of five inches and a length of nine inches. This tube does not directly touch box A; a gap of a few lines separates them. Into this gap are inserted the transparent objects whose images are to appear on the white curtain, which has been given the name of mirror.

[C12-19 | source PDF 349–349]
To this tube D is fixed, at I, a hemispherical glass lens of four inches’ focal length and four inches in diameter. The objective lens of this tube has a focal length of about three inches and a diameter of fifteen lines. It is fixed to a diaphragm made movable by a rack, by turning knob F. Inside the fantascope, at the center and about four inches from the hemispherical lens, place a powerful Argand lamp G, fitted with a good parabolic reflector of silver.

[C12-20 | source PDF 349–349]
The fantascope’s chimney is bent, or straight like T; in the latter case it has internal divisions to prevent the light from being visible outside.

[C12-21 | source PDF 349–350]
The device R fits onto the end of tube D and serves as its shutter; it is indispensable for regulating the light of the objects. SS are two copper blades joined at R by a pivot. By means of a knob these blades move apart or together like the blades of scissors, letting through more or less light as the image requires. While table M, also called the carriage, is moving, the physicist must take the most minute care to coordinate the travel of the objective lens with the movements of the blades.

[C12-22 | source PDF 350–351]
Such is the arrangement of the apparatus for transparent objects. [C12-N4] But when one wishes to show the spectator the reflected images of opaque objects, such as a portrait, a statue or a living person, tube D must be replaced with another tube about six inches in diameter, containing two very clear achromatic lenses, five inches in diameter and together giving a focal length of eight to nine inches. The opaque objects, which must always be of a color tending toward white, are then placed upside down on support L, which is made of iron and whose axis is at a suitable distance from the achromatic lens. For these experiments the inner back of box A must be lined with a piece of black velvet. Their perfection depends entirely on the intensity of the light illuminating the objects; the use of hydrogen gas should offer very powerful means.

[C12-23 | source PDF 351–351]
The entire fantascope apparatus A is placed on a table M three feet high. Its four uprights N carry small copper rollers intended to give the whole apparatus a smooth and even movement forward and backward along two wooden tracks PP, exactly parallel, fifteen to eighteen feet long and fixed to the floor in line with the center of the percale curtain we have called the mirror.

[C12-24 | source PDF 351–352]
Moving this apparatus toward or away from the mirror, combined with the movement of the objective lens, makes the image smaller or larger. Thus, when the fantascope is nine or ten inches from the percale curtain, the transparent images are as small as possible and do not exceed the size of the original. Conversely, when the apparatus is moved back fifteen or eighteen feet, the images can reach nine or ten feet in height. It should be understood that, if the opening R, equipped with a special mechanism, is opened appropriately, the image can then receive light only in proportion to its greater or lesser size, so that to the spectators on the other side of the mirror it will appear immensely far away or very close at hand.

[C12-25 | source PDF 352–352]
The description of phantasmagoria would be incomplete if I omitted to speak of the multiplication of shadows, commonly called the dance of the witches.

[C12-26 | source PDF 352–353]
After the dance of the witches, the wandering phantoms remain to be discussed. What would spectators say if these shades and goblins seemed able to appear only in the same corners of the room? They would take them for lifeless specters and motionless simulacra; their reputation as revenants would be lost, and people would rightly mock these dead creatures who falsely wish to give themselves the airs of the living. But the most inquisitive and the boldest spectators fall silent when they see the shades appear unexpectedly among them; when they turn around and find themselves almost in a phantom’s arms, or raise their eyes and see it hovering above their heads. How often the ladies have let out sudden cries at the sight of the mournful owl or the skull roaming over the audience! Yet there were also some bold spirits in the assembly. When Diogenes advanced among the spectators with his lantern, it was not uncommon to see rash people try to seize his light; but suddenly the philosopher disappeared and went to write on the wall at the back of the room these sardonic words: I am looking for a man. The means of producing this illusion will be found in the next chapter.

Original notes

[C12-N1 | source PDF 338–338]
The application is dated 7 Pluviôse, Year VII.

[C12-N2 | source PDF 342–342]
The amiable king of gourmands, Grimod de la Reynière.

[C12-N3 | source PDF 342–342]
Beyond these limits the specters rest, awaiting the blessed hope.

[C12-N4 | source PDF 350–350]
The execution of paintings on glass is very important to phantasmagoria; it requires accurate drawing and a particular touch. The broad highlights are obtained through the transparency of glass that has received no color, and the shaded parts are painted in oils with transparent layers. The backgrounds of these paintings are completely opaque; only the image one wishes to represent is visible. Only in Berlin have I met a painter who understood this branch well.

Editorial record

Robertson’s claims of priority, the eight-year secrecy, the Aubée and Clisorius litigation and the aborted panorama are preserved as his account. His designation of Robert Fulton as one of two Englishmen is retained, not silently corrected. His statement that the proceeding lapsed is retained alongside the earlier reference to final disposition; no independent legal conclusion is supplied. Patent application date7 Pluviôse, Year VII is checked against the note.

The opening Horace quotation is retained with a bracketed translation. The three-line Latin cemetery inscription is retained, with Robertson’s own French translation rendered in its original author note. The latter supplies specters, which is not explicit in the Latin. The source’s spellings Flud, Kirker, Grétérich, Windig and fantasmaparastasie are retained; Auvray’s seven names and Robertson’s sarcastic account are not silently reconciled.

The historical apparatus dimensions and all letter references are retained as printed without modern conversion. Vingt pieds carrés is rendered twenty square feet; it is not silently altered to a twenty-foot-square screen. The small initial projection size, focal lengths, apparatus distances and the different diameters are historical specifications, not a validated modern optical design. The source’s use of I for several locations does not map cleanly to the reproduced engraving; the diagram is not redrawn or relabeled.

Miroir is retained as mirror after the text explicitly defines it as the percale projection screen. Demi-boule en verre is rendered hemispherical glass lens, objectif as objective lens, quinquet as Argand lamp, and chariot as carriage. The printed moyens réfléchis on p.328 is read as reflected images in context; the word moyens remains in the French record. The awkward ou before ayant on p.329 is omitted in the English as a syntactic error, with the full French retained. The chimney’s intervalles intérieurs is rendered internal divisions in the context of preventing light leakage.

The source mentions the multiplication of shadows and then immediately says After the dance of the witches without giving the promised explanation here. This abrupt transition is preserved. The final reference to the next chapter is retained. The complete original fantascope engraving and chapter tailpiece are reproduced without generated imagery.

Chapter XIII

Various apparatus for phantasmagoria. M. Lenoir. Anecdote of a living specter. Underground gallery. The dagger and the avenue of fir trees. The Bleeding Nun. Nostradamus and Marie de Médicis. A pretty woman emerging from a dressing case. Rain, hail and thunder. La d’Oliva in the groves of Versailles.

[C13-01 | source PDF 354–354]
Perhaps I may believe, without too much vanity, that enthusiasts of phantasmagoria will look in my book, as in a handbook of this kind of recreation in physics, for methods and various descriptions. My work would therefore be very incomplete if it did not add to the narrative a section that might be called technical. By mingling a few recollections with the explanations, I have tried to make them less dry; as they are generally clear and brief, and most are accompanied by illustrations, perhaps they will interest even people unfamiliar with physics.

[C13-02 | source PDF 354–354]
Megascope

[C13-03 | source PDF 354–355]
The etymology of this word means: To see objects enlarged. Phantasmagoria owes its knowledge of this instrument to me, and above all its application to artificial light. The physicist Charles, who first used it, guarded it extremely jealously.

[C13-04 | source PDF 355–355]
Explanation. The fantascope consists of a first lens on the object side, with a focal length of two feet, and a second lens on the image-plane side, with a focal length of seven feet. The distance between them inside the tube is four inches.

[C13-05 | source PDF 355–355]
I placed this tube fifteen feet from the mirror; I illuminated my opaque objects with a single lamp body fitted with five draft burners and silver reflectors. The objects measure eight inches.

[C13-06 | source PDF 355–355]
Animated Megascope, or Living Phantasmagoria

[C13-07 | source PDF 355–355]
To obtain the image of a larger object, a person for example, fit the following apparatus to this same partition, which is eighteen feet from the mirror:

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-animated-megascope.png]
Animated megascope. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.333.

[C13-08 | source PDF 355–355]
A. A fitted box of about ten inches, painted black inside.

[C13-09 | source PDF 355–355]
B. A diaphragm with an opening of six inches.

[C13-10 | source PDF 356–356]
C. An objective lens with a focal length of eight feet and a diameter of two inches.

[C13-11 | source PDF 356–356]
D. A parallel mirror of six inches.

[C13-12 | source PDF 356–356]
E. The object.

[C13-13 | source PDF 356–356]
G. The upright image of this object. The apparatus must be fitted eight or nine feet above the floor, on the partition where the fantascope for opaque objects is placed. Illuminate the person at E brightly, and the image will reappear at G on the canvas.

[C13-14 | source PDF 356–356]
This method, which M. Lenoir, a stockbroker and very knowledgeable amateur, also devised independently, turns the objects upright. But because of the mirror’s inclination, a person’s feet cannot be in focus when the head is, and vice versa.

[C13-15 | source PDF 356–356]
Having mentioned M. Lenoir’s name, I take the opportunity to say that at the beginning of my career I received the strongest encouragement from him. He even offered to invest ten thousand francs in my phantasmagoria enterprise in return for a share of the profits. Despite my refusals, he encouraged me just as warmly to persevere. “You are on the road to fortune,” he told me. “Be quite certain that in Paris there is no such thing as a small business.”

[C13-16 | source PDF 356–357]
The title living phantasmagoria reminds me of a rather amusing anecdote. A certain M. Nahuys of Breda, a great enthusiast of phantasmagoria, was giving a performance for his friends. His servant, dressed in black with the fabric clinging to his skin, was to represent a skeleton and appear only at the end of the performance. The servant fell asleep. In a moment of forgetfulness, and in complete darkness, M. Nahuys called loudly to him and told him to go at once to a neighboring apothecary for spirits of wine. Suddenly roused from sleep, the servant forgets his costume and runs into the street. One can imagine his effect on the passersby: people began fleeing in every direction before the walking skeleton. He reaches the apothecary’s shop and has scarcely opened the door when everyone inside recoils with a loud cry. The phantom stops in astonishment, increasing the terror whose cause he is asking about. His voice is recognized. “The idiot!” cries the apothecary. “How can anyone go out dressed like that!” At once the servant remembers his spectral uniform. Dazed by what he has just done, and seemingly frightened of himself, he shuts the door without completing his errand, bounds down the stairs four at a time and takes to his heels in turn through the streets, causing the same alarm as before. He reaches his master quite out of breath. His master reassures him, laughs heartily at this comic adventure and sends him back, in different clothes, for the item he wanted.

[C13-17 | source PDF 358–358]
Use the optical tube described in the following chapter. The Apotheosis of Héloïse is performed with this apparatus.

[C13-18 | source PDF 358–358]
The Apotheosis of Héloïse

[C13-19 | source PDF 358–358]
To perform it, the whole interior of the coffin must be black, so that when it opens only the figure is visible. Melzer’s instrument in Vienna was illuminated by forty Argand lamps. He had acquired it from Busth, who had himself obtained it from someone else.

[C13-20 | source PDF 358–358]
Multiplication, or the Dance of the Witches

[C13-21 | source PDF 358–358]
I have benefited too often from chance to forget to mention it here in connection with this experiment. One evening, while making trials in phantasmagoria, I was in darkness when two people carrying lights passed each other in the adjoining room. In the partition separating us was a very small window, whose image appeared doubled on the opposite wall of the room where I stood. I observed the movement of these lights, and the multiplication of shadows was discovered.

[C13-22 | source PDF 358–359]
The figures used for these experiments are cut out as openings in thin cardboard. They should measure about a foot if the fantascope’s box is used for the experiment. Place them at two or three openings made in the front of the apparatus, which should stand about four feet from the mirror. If you hold the light of a small candle inside the box, opposite your cutout figure, the representation of a figure will appear on the mirror. Double or multiply the number of candles, and you will likewise double or multiply the images of each piece of cardboard on the mirror. By moving and arranging these lights in particular ways, you will obtain effects all the more curious because the method is simple and ingenious.

[C13-23 | source PDF 359–359]
For this experiment I had a dancer made in copper whose arms and legs had several movements. The space between the legs, which must not let light through, was closed by copper blades joined together like a fan. One can imagine the effect produced by the simultaneous movement of all these legs, sometimes as many as fifty.

[C13-24 | source PDF 359–360]
It is better, however, to perform this experiment, which is astonishing only when the figures are multiplied in great numbers, with a separate partition A, four feet from mirror C. You will then have more freedom to move and arrange candles B.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-shadow-multiplication.png]
Multiplication of shadows. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.338.

[C13-25 | source PDF 360–360]
The Dance of the Witches with Movement

[C13-26 | source PDF 360–360]
It is easy to understand that if the cardboard in which figure A is cut out can turn in a circle within frame B, the figure will sometimes have its feet in the air and sometimes turn a somersault, as at C; or two figures will seem to rock on a seesaw, D. If monkeys are represented, their jaws can also be made to move. To produce the movement, move knob E from F to E, and the seesaw will rise and fall alternately on each side.

[C13-27 | source PDF 360–361]
If figure 5 is mounted in a round piece of cardboard A with a toothed wooden ring, and the long frame H also has teeth, then when you move frame G, which carries the figure, A will advance, continually somersaulting forward, or backward if it is pushed back.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-moving-figures.png]
Moving figures for the dance of the witches. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.339.

[C13-28 | source PDF 361–361]
Phantasmagoria by Daylight and without Optical Apparatus

[C13-29 | source PDF 361–361]
Underground Gallery

[C13-30 | source PDF 361–362]
By reflection in two mirrors, an underground gallery of a wholly phantasmagoric kind can be shown. Above all, a gallery or room about fifty feet deep is needed, or longer if possible. On the right and left, cutouts of tombs or mausoleums, skillfully painted, are arranged like stage wings. Everything is brightly lit and reflected in a large plane mirror B, seven feet in diameter. The image in this mirror is reflected in another, smaller mirror C; in the depths of this latter mirror, the spectator’s eye seems to perceive an underground passage, or a gallery descending into the lower story of the building. The illusion will be complete if, in the distance, young children have been placed carrying flowers to these tombs, and in the foreground, shades draped in white. This perspective, presented in Vienna before Their Imperial Majesties, produced a feeling of surprise and admiration.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-underground-gallery.png]
Underground gallery. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.340.

[C13-31 | source PDF 362–364]
Speaking of perspective, I recall one of the strangest mistakes ignorance can cause. It was, I believe, in 1793; I was in the stagecoach from Paris to Orléans. Posts had been established along the roads where travelers were obliged to show their papers, thus proving that they belonged neither to the émigrés nor to the suspects. We came upon one of these offices a quarter of an hour’s journey from Étampes. I wanted to spare the ladies who filled the coach the trouble of getting out, and undertook to present everyone’s papers for inspection. The civic sentry proved to be a forbidding-looking man, a sort of village Brutus, who first cast a most unfriendly glance at me and seemed at once to pronounce me suspect before any examination. Things grew much worse when he set eyes on a small book of optical experiments, which he forced me to show him. “I arrest you,” he told me. “And why?” “As a suspect and a conspirator.” “What proves to you, citizen, that I am either?” “Those daggers.” “Those are daggers?” “Yes, daggers. I recognize them: they are exactly the shape of those carried by the famous Knights of the Dagger. No doubt you belong to them. We ought to know whom you are taking these designs to.” “You are mistaken, citizen,” I replied, keeping as straight a face as I could. “What you see are not daggers; it is an avenue of fir trees.” Indeed, the avenue, drawn in perspective, tapered to a point and had struck the citizen by its picturesque shape. All my efforts to undeceive him were useless. He proceeded against me more rigorously and, having found a box of tooth powder in my pocket, said, “Very good! Here is something to sharpen the daggers with.” “Not at all, citizen. That powder is for cleaning one’s teeth.” “You lie, aristocrat! Besides, a true sans-culotte has no need to clean his teeth. I arrest you as a suspect.” He immediately sent for his superior, who was fortunately better informed, smiled at the mistake and allowed me to continue my journey, to the regret of the sans-culotte who did not clean his teeth.

[C13-32 | source PDF 364–364]
Apparition of the Bleeding Nun

[C13-33 | source PDF 364–364]
The sound of a distant bell is heard. At the far end of a cloister, dimly lit by the moon’s last rays, a bloodstained nun appears, carrying a lantern in one hand and a dagger in the other. She advances slowly and seems to seek the object of her desires. She approaches the spectators so closely that they are often seen moving aside to let her pass.

[C13-34 | source PDF 364–365]
Explanation. This experiment presents a great difficulty: projecting a new, moving image onto the first picture, which represents a cloister. It is easy to foresee that the apparatus used for the nun’s progress would become visible to the spectators when it entered the rays projected by the fantascope needed for the cloister. To solve this problem, fantascope A, for the cloister, must be placed on the spectators’ side, and the other, B, for the nun, on the near side of the mirror, that is, the transparent canvas. I give here the arrangement for the gravedigger scene.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-nun-gravedigger.png]
Projection arrangement for the nun and gravedigger scenes. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.343.

[C13-35 | source PDF 365–365]
Shakespeare’s Gravedigger

[C13-36 | source PDF 365–365]
The scene represents a cemetery. Half of this picture must be projected onto the canvas by apparatus A, on the spectators’ side, and the other half by fantascope B, on the near side of the canvas. If someone in suitable costume walks close to this mirror, in the part lit by fantascope B, his shadow will be visible to the spectators at A.

[C13-37 | source PDF 366–366]
Nostradamus and Marie de Médicis

[C13-38 | source PDF 366–366]
By what means could Nostradamus have deceived Marie de Médicis, who, anxious about her future, came to consult him on the fate of France? It is known that the wonder-worker showed her, in the future, that the Bourbon throne was destined for her. This illusion must have been performed in the following manner:

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-nostradamus.png]
Nostradamus and Marie de Médicis. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.344.

[C13-39 | source PDF 366–366]
The throne placed in the first room A is reflected by a mirror hidden in canopy B. Marie de Médicis sees its image in mirror C, held by Cupid, and so on.

[C13-40 | source PDF 367–367]
Intangible Shadows in Miniature

[C13-41 | source PDF 367–367]
Four rooms are represented by the numbers:

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-miniature-shadows.png]
Intangible shadows in miniature. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.345.

[C13-42 | source PDF 367–367]
The first partition of room 1 is the translucent screen onto which living people cast their shadows with the aid of the double or triple candle B. At partition E is placed a tube containing two lenses with a focal length of about twelve inches, whose images are received by a very clear prism of two and a half inches. Image A passes through rooms 2 and 3 to appear in miniature on the small translucent screen G. The spectator in room 4 enjoys this illusion. For this experiment I have also used a concave lens, which made the objects smaller.

[C13-43 | source PDF 367–367]
This experiment can be performed more easily with the optical tube described below.

[C13-44 | source PDF 368–368]
Making an Object Advance in a Concave Mirror, Such as a Head That Seems to Come Forward

[C13-45 | source PDF 368–368]
A is the opening through which the object is seen in the mirror. A head D is placed upside down, lit by a silver reflector and fastened to carriage E. A cord G, driven by a crank, guides the carriage. It is important that the head travel properly within the mirror’s focus; it will then seem to approach and rush at the spectators. At N is also a diaphragm of black cloth, so that the lights do not illuminate mirror B.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-advancing-head.png]
A head advancing in a concave mirror. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.346.

[C13-46 | source PDF 369–369]
The Dagger Thrust

[C13-47 | source PDF 369–369]
A represents a table supporting mirror B, in which the illusion is shown. When the lights have been extinguished, the backed mirror is moved aside by a mechanical device. B is an opening making way for dagger D, which advances by means of the concave mirror at E. Needless to say, the partition wall is open above and below the table.

[C13-48 | source PDF 369–369]
This method perfectly explains the illusion I mentioned earlier, which made so strong an impression on Louis XIV that he failed to acquire M. Villette’s mirror.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-dagger.png]
The dagger illusion. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.347.

[C13-49 | source PDF 369–369]
Instead of a hand to guide the dagger, a very simple arrangement can be used to perform the experiment.

[C13-50 | source PDF 369–370]
Two wooden rods attached to the ceiling swing on two eye bolts. These rods are joined by an iron wire.

[C13-51 | source PDF 370–370]
A cardboard box attached to the rods follows their movement. It contains lights to illuminate the wax hand. If I pull the wire, the hand is brought closer to the spectator; when I wish to enjoy the illusion, I release the ring, and the hand, moving suddenly toward the mirror, seems to emerge from it and strike the spectator.

[C13-52 | source PDF 370–370]
The Magic Box

[C13-53 | source PDF 370–371]
This experiment is delightful, and a very curious trial of it was once made. I had taught a lady the very simple secret of several illusions that pleased her greatly. We were in the country, and a man who was a most pronounced freethinker was paying her assiduous court. “Well, sir,” she said, “if you are not afraid of apparitions, I promise you one tonight that may satisfy you. At precisely midnight, open the box now on your table, for which here is the key, and my image will come out of it.” To her gallant this promise seemed only agreeable banter. He promised to open the box without intending to do so, fearing to become the victim of a practical joke. Yet he could not resist, and scarcely had he opened the box when the pretty lady’s figure emerged from it with a grave and composed air. The freethinker was disconcerted and at first said nothing. But the lady, who was in the next room and could well imagine his expression, burst out laughing, and the scene ended in a great many jokes.

[C13-54 | source PDF 371–371]
Here are the details of this illusion: A, a concave mirror; head B, perpendicular toward C, seems to emerge at D to the eye placed at E. Head B must be brightly lit, but it alone; the mirror must remain in shadow so that it is invisible. G is the wall, and H an open box, supposedly placed on table K. The illusion is produced through this box, whose interior is painted black. Needless to say, the wall separating the two rooms is open beneath the table.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-magic-box.png]
The magic box. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.349.

[C13-55 | source PDF 372–372]
Showing the Image of a Person in a Concave Mirror

[C13-56 | source PDF 372–372]
The person being represented must lean forward before a large plane mirror B, whose image is reproduced upside down in concave mirror C, and from there appears upright to the public. By this means a lighted candle can be represented with its flame appearing upright. Remember that only the figure must be illuminated, and neither of the two mirrors at all. Dress the figure in white to obtain more light. The experiment is usually performed in a doorway D. Board E conceals person B; the lower half of the doorway must be blocked. Mirror A must measure at least two and a half feet square, so that it can show the images of two or three people. K is a diaphragm of black cloth, one foot from the mirror. MM, on either side of the doorway, are two alabaster vases containing a light; their presence serves to darken as much as possible the background where mirror C stands, which without their aid would always be a little visible.

[C13-57 | source PDF 372–373]
Among experiments in physics, none are more agreeable or more varied than those offered by the study of optics. The combinations an intelligent physicist can obtain from a concave mirror are infinite: here one may truly say that the known leads to the unknown. Later I shall describe how to show little actors performing a comedy on a small stage two feet in diameter.

[C13-58 | source PDF 373–373]
It will also be interesting to learn how I managed to show a person astride the cathedral’s bell tower, gesticulating and dancing in a way that frightened all his friends. I shall also explain the telescope through which all Paris saw the shade of Henri IV walking about my physics cabinet on the Boulevard Montmartre in 1814.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-living-image.png]
The image of a living person. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.351.

[C13-59 | source PDF 374–374]
Optical Illusion by Means of Transparencies

[C13-60 | source PDF 374–374]
First, A and B are two rooms separated by wall B. O represents a small opening of about one square foot, finished on the side of room A with a small drapery. In black box C, placed below this opening, are set transparent pictures painted on glass. They should be fifteen to eighteen inches long and are illuminated by three lamps L. If mirror N is black, since it does not reflect as much light as a backed mirror, the number of lights or Argand lamps at L must be doubled.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-transparencies.png]
Optical illusion with transparencies. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.352.

[C13-61 | source PDF 374–374]
This experiment is admittedly known, but it becomes greatly interesting when these pictures are replaced by temples or gardens in Chinese firework effects.

[C13-62 | source PDF 375–375]
Testing the Parallelism of a Plane Mirror

[C13-63 | source PDF 375–375]
Since plane mirrors are frequently used in the methods of phantasmagoria, I thought readers would be grateful for a means of checking their parallelism. [C13-N1]

[C13-64 | source PDF 375–375]
Stand about fifty or a hundred feet from any object outlined against a clear background, such as a stovepipe or a lightning conductor. Observe that object in your mirror, inclined at more than 45 degrees. If you see no penumbra and the object does not appear double, the mirror’s parallelism is accurate.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-mirror-parallelism.png]
Testing a plane mirror. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.353.

[C13-65 | source PDF 376–376]
Apparition on Smoke

[C13-66 | source PDF 376–376]
Of all the experiments furnished by physical theories, surely none are more capable of striking the imagination than those of phantasmagoria, especially when, without any apparent preparation, the phantasmagorist throws a few grains of incense or olibanum onto a brazier, and at once there appears upon this light, undulating vapor, according to the spectator’s wish, the shade of a friend, a father, a beloved woman…

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-smoke-apparition.png]
An apparition on smoke. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.354.

[C13-67 | source PDF 377–377]
Wandering Phantoms

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-divider.png]


[C13-68 | source PDF 377–377]
Diogenes with His Lantern [C13-N2]

[C13-69 | source PDF 377–377]
To perform this subject, have a mask maker fashion an expressive head in fine cloth, then coat it with wax to make it translucent. Mount it skillfully on a board, drape it appropriately and illuminate it from within with a dark lantern, fitted with a small device that can be lowered or raised quickly, thus suddenly concealing or restoring the light and, consequently, the spectators’ view of the object. The lantern is a simple cylindrical bottle of clear glass containing essential oil of cloves in which several grains of phosphorus have been dissolved. When this bottle is opened, the air entering it illuminates the whole interior. This glow disappears when the bottle is closed. As for the writing, it is done with a phosphorus pencil that leaves a luminous trace.

[C13-70 | source PDF 378–378]
M. Cayeux’s Eugraph, According to the Description He Gave Me

[C13-71 | source PDF 378–378]
This apparatus is intended to replace the camera obscura. The object is not reproduced upside down in it, but distant objects do not appear distinctly. It has an advantage for painters: portraits could be drawn with it very successfully.

[C13-72 | source PDF 378–378]
It consists, first, of objective lens A, with a focal length of six inches and a diameter of about four inches; and second, of two lenses C placed in a tube five to six lines apart. These two lenses receive the rays one inch beyond the focus of objective A, which must be movable. D is a translucent screen or ground glass to receive image B.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-eugraph.png]
M. Cayeux’s eugraph. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.356.

[C13-73 | source PDF 378–378]
Accessories of Phantasmagoria

[C13-74 | source PDF 378–378]
Glass Harmonica

[C13-75 | source PDF 378–379]
The melodious sounds of Franklin’s glass harmonica contribute powerfully to the effects of phantasmagoria, preparing not only the mind but the senses themselves for strange impressions through a melody so sweet that it sometimes stimulates the nervous system very strongly. In the absence of this instrument, the célestine would be preferable to organ playing. Wind instruments, especially horns, should be preferred to strings.

[C13-76 | source PDF 379–379]
Chinese Tam-tam, Called Gongon in Sweden

[C13-77 | source PDF 379–379]
This instrument, with its resounding and terrible noise, should be used sparingly and only at important moments. Any object, the head of Medusa for example, that seems to come from afar to throw itself upon the public will produce a greater effect if this instrument is struck violently at the moment when the head has reached its greatest enlargement. Taste and intelligence determine the use of the alarm bell.

[C13-78 | source PDF 379–379]
Multiplying Glass

[C13-79 | source PDF 379–379]
When I wish to double or triple a figure, I use a piece of glass of two inches, cut into three surfaces A and mounted in a small wooden frame B. This prism must be held three inches from the fantascope’s objective lens. (See Fig. A, page 358.)

[C13-80 | source PDF 380–380]
To multiply a single head nine times, one would have to hold at the same distance a piece of glass eighteen lines square, cut into nine facets. By turning the glass on itself, all the images will be given a rotary movement.

[C13-81 | source PDF 380–380]
Imitating the Sound of Rain

[C13-82 | source PDF 380–380]
I have observed that monotony of sound favors the illusions of phantasmagoria. Uniform noise lulls thought to sleep, as it were. All ideas seem drawn back to a single object, to one and the same impression. This noise has another purpose too: to conceal the movement, and even the presence, of people and things, and so on.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-multiplier-rain.png]
Multiplying glass and rain apparatus: Fig. A. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.358.

[C13-83 | source PDF 380–381]
Explanation. Cut forty to fifty round discs, five inches in diameter, from good, smooth cardboard, and slit each from the circumference to the center, as in the figure above. Make a hole of one inch in the middle of these discs. Join all the discs by gluing cut edge C of disc D to cut edge E of disc G, continuing in this way until all the joined discs form a single spiral or elongated screw. Insert a round stick through its center. Fasten this spiral to the stick so that the discs are about four inches apart; cover the whole with strong paper, securely glued; put in half a pound of dried peas, choosing very round ones; and close the cylinder at both ends. Different positions of this apparatus produce rain or hail.

[C13-84 | source PDF 381–381]
Imitating Thunder

[C13-85 | source PDF 381–381]
In the earliest days of my phantasmagoria I used a large sheet of copper, hung vertically and moved by hand at its lower edge. To keep this sheet from sounding metallic, it must be hammered perfectly flat. I obtain the sound of thunder from an oak frame six feet long and three feet wide, fitted with keys to stretch the donkey skins with which it was covered.

[C13-86 | source PDF 382–382]
This frame, suspended at its four corners and completely isolated, produced a deep rolling sound when skillfully struck with both fists. Instead of parchment, the frame can be covered with strong grand-aigle paper.

[C13-87 | source PDF 382–382]
Imitating Wind and Hurricane

[C13-88 | source PDF 382–382]
Have a wooden cylinder M made, three feet in diameter and as wide as the taffeta N.

[Original illustration: chapter-thirteen-wind.png]
Wind and hurricane apparatus. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.360.

[C13-89 | source PDF 382–382]
Slats IT are nailed to this cylinder four inches apart. As they rotate against the taffeta covering, they produce a whistling sound, louder or softer according to the motion given to the crank.

[C13-90 | source PDF 382–383]
Before ending this chapter, the last on phantasmagoria, I wish to recall an adventure that played a great part in the trial of the famous necklace. Of all real apparitions, this was certainly the most astonishing; and it may serve to show that there is nothing improbable in the supposition of a person stationed to represent someone dead, although M. Salverte finds it inadmissible. It is known, indeed, that the young courtesan d’Oliva played the part of Marie Antoinette in the garden of Versailles, resembling her somewhat in stature and face. She received Cardinal de Rohan and even spoke to him as though she were really the queen, and the cardinal was deceived. People still ask today how this could have happened; how this prince, who saw the queen daily and heard her voice, displayed such excessive credulity. Surely Cagliostro’s magic wand must have passed that way. But I have already spoken of the power Cagliostro possessed over Cardinal de Rohan, to whom he was a true Nostradamus; and I have mentioned this familiar incident only to support the explanation M. Salverte rejects concerning the apparition of Emperor Basil’s son.

[C13-91 | source PDF 383–384]
I shall not finish with this subject without quoting a line of Virgil in which the meaning of two words suggests to us a very philosophical connection. Indeed, for educated people, prodigies and trifles are closely related, and of all forms of worship it has been possible to say:

[C13-92 | source PDF 384–384]
Heu! quæ non nugas quæ non miracula fingunt?
[Alas! What trifles, what wonders do they not invent?]

Original notes

[C13-N1 | source PDF 375–375]
At the time of my researches into phantasmagoria, I owed to the talents of M. Lerebours, optician and member of the Bureau of Longitudes, carefully worked lenses that assured my success. Today MM. Vincent and Charles Chevalier, father and son, are to be recommended for their knowledge of this branch of optics.

[C13-N2 | source PDF 377–377]
See page 331.

Editorial record

The source calls the apparatus a fantascope in the explanation under Megascope. This terminology and the differing fifteen-foot and eighteen-foot distances are retained. Dimensions and focal lengths are reproduced without modern conversion or an implied engineering validation.

The key’s boîte garnie is rendered fitted box, without inventing an unprinted construction detail. The source calls D a miroir parallèle, rendered parallel mirror, although the following paragraph discusses its inclination. The pronoun in Il faut l’appliquer is rendered the apparatus in the installation instruction. The six labels A,B,C,D,E,G are retained, with no invented F. The printed passage has no full stop between objet and Il; one is supplied in the French comparison for readability.

The printed references to the optical tube in the following chapter and the Apotheosis of Héloïse are preserved for a later cross-reference audit. Names Nahuys, Melzer and Busth are retained as printed. The servant’s anecdote changes into the historical present in the source; this is preserved.

The witches’ cardboard figures are openings cut through cardboard, not opaque silhouettes, as shown by the source text and diagrams. The reference comme en C was misread G by OCR and is corrected from the printed image. The mechanism’s other labels, including the numeral5 and E from F to E, are retained as printed. Re-repousse is idiomatically rendered pushed back, without silently altering the French record.

The historical heading sans optique is rendered without optical apparatus; the following description still expressly uses two mirrors. Miroir in the earlier projection instructions follows Chapter XII’s screen terminology; the underground gallery uses actual plane mirrors. All apparatus diagrams are retained from original scans.

The revolution-era anecdote and magic-box anecdote lack some closing quotation marks in print; English quotation boundaries are supplied at the end of the respective spoken sentences. The 1793 date and Knights of the Dagger are retained as Robertson’s recollection.

Source diagram letters are retained even where the prose is inconsistent. In the image-of-a-person experiment, the source initially calls the plane mirror B and later A, while B also identifies the person. The transparency description repeats B for room and wall. The source wind-machine label IT is retained. Image comparison corrects OCR errors C/G in the concave mirror and magic-box descriptions, and K/R for the magic-box table. The phrase perpendicular toward C is retained without inventing a missing angle or alignment instruction.

The near side of the screen in the nun and gravedigger passages follows the operator’s viewpoint; the diagram places apparatus A with the spectator and B behind the screen. The term transparent is rendered translucent screen for projection surfaces and transparency for painted glass pictures. Feux chinois is rendered Chinese firework effects, without adding an unprinted mechanism.

Names, historical claims and attributions are retained as Robertson gives them, including Marie de Médicis in the Nostradamus story, the closing attribution to Virgil, and the account of d’Oliva, Rohan and Cagliostro. These are not represented as independently verified history. The Latin verse is preserved with a bracketed English translation.

The printed erratum on Volume I PDF470 changes les miracles to les prodiges on printed362, line4. The English accordingly reads prodigies. The uncorrected reading remains in the French comparison, and the erratum is recorded here rather than silently changing the source.

Harmonica is the glass harmonica, not the modern mouth organ. Célestine is retained as the historical instrument name, not changed to celesta. Beffroi is rendered alarm bell, preserving the source’s change of term after the tam-tam description. Grand-aigle is retained as the named paper format. The historical phosphorus, optical and sound-effect descriptions are translated without modernization.

Original author note See page331 points to the wandering-phantom passage at the close of Chapter XII (PDF353). Figure A on original page358 is reproduced in the combined multiplier/rain diagram. Promised later descriptions, including the optical tube, miniature theater and Henri IV telescope, remain for the full-edition cross-reference audit.

Chapter XIV

Letter from Félix Nogaret. Galvanic Society. Condenser. Curious observations on electricity. Cardboard electricity. The physicist cat. Invention of gas, and the inventor’s death. Letter from Volta.

[C14-01 | source PDF 385–385]
Elsewhere I have described at some length the history of the discovery of galvanism and the difficulties encountered in establishing the true theory of this new application of electricity. I therefore wish to add only a few words about the Galvanic Society, and a few observations, to what I have already said. Nor do I hesitate to repeat that these experiments were completely unknown in France when I began to concern myself with them. Further proof will be found in a very short letter from Félix Nogaret. This prolific writer prided himself particularly on originality, and at least generally put some into the titles of his works. [C14-N1]

[C14-02 | source PDF 386–386]
At the head of a note I had addressed him as monsieur instead of citizen, just as later I sometimes still wrote citizen instead of monsieur. Here is how he took me up on my mistake:

[C14-03 | source PDF 386–386]
Ministry of the Interior

[C14-04 | source PDF 386–386]
To Citizen Robertson

[C14-05 | source PDF 386–386]
Philosophical citizen, useful man, who make a Monsieur of me, I too am a philosopher, have no doubt of it. I am not one of those flattered by a title I would have liked to be rid of more than forty years ago. Not everyone who wishes can lose it! One must be a man renowned in some field. When people speak of you, they say Robertson; I shall not have such good fortune in my lifetime. Perhaps it will come when I am no more. Meanwhile, although I have lost my entire fortune, I am a citizen like Jean-Jacques. My soul expands at Tancrède, and I am pleased to find that title even in the poetry of the greatest flatterer France has ever had, Boileau.

[C14-06 | source PDF 386–387]
I thank you for your courtesy. Since only décadi is our own, I could not make use of the tickets, which remained at my office. But I intend to come and learn from you on duodi, as you suggest. Everything is useful to us paper scribblers. You have no idea of the use I have made of your experiment on the galvanic fluid: it has given me a new idea in literature, but literature is a very small thing beside science!

[C14-07 | source PDF 387–387]
Greetings, citizen in question; I wish your discoveries every triumph.

[C14-08 | source PDF 387–387]
Félix Nogaret.

[C14-09 | source PDF 387–388]
I regret not knowing what use Nogaret could make of galvanism for literature. In any event, that was only an incidental outcome of this discovery; it was in chemistry that it furnished new methods and became a powerful aid. At the time the Galvanic Society was formed, that is, in Year XI, people were still seeking all the applications it might offer. Physicians and physicists came together to hasten its progress and dispel even the slightest doubts about its nature. M. Nauche founded this society, which numbered among its members MM. Izarn, Galvani, his nephew Aldini, Gautherot, Toussain-Dubreuil, Chompré, Charpentier and others. I was invited to join from its earliest days. It met once a week at the Oratoire and continued its efforts until galvanic experiments, spread among the public, had made galvanism thoroughly known and brought about general conviction.

[C14-10 | source PDF 388–388]
Only after several discussions in this society did people fully appreciate the usefulness and perfection of the apparatus I employed, which Volta valued highly, as I have said. M. Gautherot and other members maintained that fire and flame interrupted the effect of galvanism. For several days I conducted a series of public experiments with my condensers that proved the contrary, making the reality of electricity in galvanic phenomena manifest to even the most incredulous.

[C14-11 | source PDF 388–389]
The construction of a condenser is much more difficult than the late M. Dumotiez ever imagined. [C14-N2] Its diameter must be six inches, its surface perfectly flat and its coating of varnish exceedingly thin, without the slightest break; otherwise the apparatus is useless. To avoid these almost invisible breaks, heat the discs only to 30 or 35 degrees while varnishing. You will thus avoid the varnish drying too quickly, and the brush will have time to reach every point on the surface before it does. To discover your condenser’s sensitivity, place a small piece of wet paper on it, and on the paper a five-franc coin. Having first taken care to wet your hand, touch the silver coin with a piece of zinc for four or five seconds. Then gently lift the upper disc and present it to your electrometer: the degree of divergence will indicate the degree of sensitivity.

[C14-12 | source PDF 389–390]
However perceptive a physicist may be, he very often finds himself halted in the midst of his researches for want of apparatus sensitive enough to establish an almost imperceptible fact or to test the matter about which he is in doubt. This truth, which applies to every branch of the physical sciences, applies especially to experiments in galvanism. Indeed, in physiological research there are no experiments more delicate, more microscopic or, in a sense, more fleeting than those concerned with metallic or atmospheric electricity.

[C14-13 | source PDF 390–390]
The electrometer and the condenser are the two compasses of the physicist devoted to this kind of research. I therefore had to apply myself to perfecting these two instruments, which I constantly needed. During his stay in Paris, Volta’s electrometer consisted of two small blades of hay, two inches long, delicately suspended by silver threads in a square glass enclosure. Although this instrument, which often passed through my hands, is fairly sensitive, it never seemed capable of indicating even approximately the smallest quantity of electricity. In this respect it must rank below M. Coulomb’s balance and even below Bennet’s electrometer. It nevertheless offered an advantage: Volta, accustomed to bringing extreme precision to his slightest operations, had balanced it so as to obtain, at least in his own hands, measurable results from a certain quantity of electricity collected by the condensers.

[C14-14 | source PDF 390–391]
I have described M. Coulomb’s electrometer as possessing greater sensitivity and considerable accuracy in assessing degrees of electricity. Its shape and fragility, however, make it inconvenient to carry on journeys by land or through the air.

[C14-15 | source PDF 391–391]
Several imperfections have caused Bennet’s electrometer to be abandoned. The first is that nothing can be precisely determined from the divergence of the leaves. The second is its extreme fragility: a somewhat strong electrical charge violently spreads the leaves apart and detaches them. This accident ordinarily results from the attraction between the two gold leaves, or from roughness along their edges, which interlock on contact. At the moment of electrification, the divergence carries the leaves off at an angle, tearing them or putting them out of service. This instrument is therefore unsuitable for travel. The one whose drawing I include here is extremely useful when one wishes only to detect or assess very weak electricity.

[C14-16 | source PDF 391–392]
This electrometer (see the figure on page 370) consists of a glass parallelogram A of about four inches. In the center of this enclosure is fixed vertically a copper rod B, slightly flattened and well polished. Glued to this rod at C is a strip of onion skin, one line wide and one and a half inches long. Choose one that combines transparency with the greatest toughness. Before cutting it to the shape described, use a fine brush and shell gold to trace a small line down the center of this strip. This light, movable body does not adhere to the rod, which sets it in motion as soon as some electrical power has been imparted to it.

[Original illustration: chapter-fourteen-electrometer.png]
Robertson’s portable electrometer. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.370.

[C14-17 | source PDF 392–393]
On one face of the parallelogram, opposite this rod, is fixed a metal dial divided into a hundred degrees. At its center another rod E, fitted with a ball G, advances or retreats as it turns in a screw thread. This movement controls a pointer, which shows the observer the degrees of approach and withdrawal, and consequently the repulsive force of the electricity. Small chain K connects the common reservoir with the ball, and the entire apparatus is surmounted by a small brass condenser about three inches in diameter.

[C14-18 | source PDF 393–394]
I must point out that I never use this condenser unless I cannot obtain any sign of electricity while leaving the instrument in its simplest state. The use of the condenser presents so many anomalies that it is very difficult, not to say impossible, to determine and compare known quantities of electricity with it. They differ from themselves at every instant; one can never obtain two similar results. The uncertainty of observations made by means of the condenser doubtless arises from the time that elapses between experiments, preventing the electrical effect from remaining constant and unvarying. Add to this first cause the movement of the upper cap, which the uncertain hand guides now one way, now another. The condenser becomes indispensable to the observer only when the quantities of electricity can no longer be assessed by the electrometer. Only frequent use and familiarity can make the advantages of the instrument I have just described fully known. It is of no use in experiments where the electrical tension is too great, or in the ordinary use of cylinder or plate machines; but it will be invaluable in microscopic, galvanic or atmospheric experiments.

[C14-19 | source PDF 394–394]
If, in weather unfavorable to electricity, movable body D remains still because the electrical tension acting on it is too weak, turning screw E will sometimes suffice to bring its sensitivity into play. The approach of ball G prompts the membrane to move and form an almost imperceptible angle, which the pointer nevertheless always indicates precisely. Such is the instrument I have always used in my galvanic demonstrations. It has also been very useful on my balloon voyages. I believe it more sensitive and more accurate than Bennet’s; it has the further advantage of being transportable, and even shaken, without any danger.

[C14-20 | source PDF 394–394]
With this apparatus, in the Russian climate so favorable to electrical research, I observed effects of this fluid previously unknown to me:

[C14-21 | source PDF 394–395]
1. Toward the end of January 1804, I insulated an iron bar in my study. It communicated through a pane of the window with the outside atmosphere, whose temperature at midnight was twenty-seven degrees below zero; the room thermometer showed fifteen degrees above zero. These two very different temperatures produced variations in the electrical state of my bar. The part extending into the street air was negative, and the other end positive.

[C14-22 | source PDF 395–395]
2. A metal body heated to eighty degrees showed signs of positive electricity. Bringing the same body to thirty degrees below freezing destroyed this electricity.

[C14-23 | source PDF 395–395]
3. A copper ball raised vertically six feet above a marble surface and then released struck that surface and was caught in a thoroughly dry glass as it rebounded. It gave two degrees of negative electricity. A lead ball suspended by a thoroughly dry silk thread struck, in its swing, an ivory ball suspended in the same way. The lead ball became negatively electrified and the ivory one positively.

[C14-24 | source PDF 395–396]
The series of experiments I made on collisions between different bodies often presented very strange anomalies, doubtless arising from the density, temperature and elasticity of the substances I tested. It must be admitted that no country is more favorable to electrical research than Russia. When, in the evening, a comb is passed through fairly long hair, crackling can be heard, and a will-o’-the-wisp seems to follow the comb in all its movements. How often, on pulling silk stockings off my legs at night, have I seen them remain inflated for a long time, as though the leg were still inside!

[C14-25 | source PDF 396–397]
In general, electricity can give rise to a host of entertaining and very curious experiments. Throughout my life this branch of physics has provided me with the most agreeable diversions, and at the same time a subject of study to which I have grown increasingly attached. We have seen how a small electrical machine was, so to speak, the last toy of my childhood, and how later my application to electrical experiments noticeably influenced my constitution. M. Villette, of whom I have already spoken several times and whose friendship was so useful to me, encouraged and shared my taste for the subject. This is indeed the place to say a few words about a kind of cardboard electricity he had discovered, which I mentioned in the Journal de physique of September 1790. I do not think anyone but he and I has used it.

[C14-26 | source PDF 397–398]
To obtain more than ordinary emanations, I replaced the glass on the shaft of a large, ordinary electrical machine with a cardboard disc thirty-four inches in diameter. This common cardboard was very rough. That quality seemed essential to me, because its unsmooth surface was better suited to producing through friction the stimulation necessary to develop the electrical fluid. I turned this cardboard between four cushions covered with catskins, which I sprinkled with a little of Abbé Witry’s aurum musivum. Once dried, the cardboard gave me more abundant and more powerful electricity than a plate of the same diameter. The electricity of cardboard is negative, for: 1. When its primary conductor was connected to that of vitreous electricity, no electricity remained, one having absorbed the other; 2. A Leyden jar connected on its outside to one and on its inside to the other was suddenly charged, and often even discharged with a bang, breaking the jar if electrical matter continued to accumulate in it. Turned in darkness, this cardboard produces one of the most beautiful phenomena in physics. Its entire edge is fringed with rays or sheaves of shimmering fire that increase near uninsulated bodies. On a physician’s advice, I tested the effects of this electricity on M. Tournay, aged fifty, whom paralysis had deprived of the use of his right arm and leg. To provoke sensation in the inert parts, I had to pass shocks through them registering the fourth degree on my Lane electrometer.

[C14-27 | source PDF 398–398]
Around this time, and even before it, I wrote for several periodicals, especially L’Esprit des journaux, a publication enjoying great success. There I developed more than one error with the resources of a fairly lively imagination, but one that needed a few corrections from experience.

[C14-28 | source PDF 398–399]
In a memoir of that period addressed to M. Frankinet, burgomaster of Verviers, and printed in L’Esprit des journaux in 1789, I find the description of a rather ingenious little apparatus I called Volta’s Pistol, an experiment I have repeated many times in my public sessions. It could go off eight or ten times in succession without the need to replenish the gas or close the apparatus. Here are its figure and explanation:

[Original illustration: chapter-fourteen-volta-pistol.png]
Volta’s Pistol. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.377.

[C14-29 | source PDF 399–399]
A, a copper pistol three and a half inches high and two and a half inches in diameter. Its lid, movable on a hinge, closes again at the moment of the explosion through the elasticity of spring D. Instead of gas, I put five or six drops of rectified spirits of wine into the pistol, or, better still, a few drops of ether, taking care not to wet conductor C.

[C14-30 | source PDF 399–400]
In the lectures I gave in Paris, which attracted regular listeners, I did not neglect to arouse curiosity through the singularity of the demonstrations. Thus I owned a cat of a very fine breed, with very long hair so favorable to electrical emanations that its coat sparkled in the dark. I insulated it on a stool and, after rubbing it thoroughly with my hand, gently brought one end of a pistol near its muzzle. The pistol suddenly went off, to the spectators’ great delight and the great displeasure of poor puss, whose instinct seemed to warn it of the days and hours when it was to play a scientific role. Then it seldom failed to seek every possible means of escape, and I needed vigilant supervision to compel its modesty to accept the honors of the session.

[C14-31 | source PDF 400–401]
Many women of society attended these sessions. They appeared keenly interested in all the experiments and often asked for further details about electrical phenomena and about bodies that conducted or did not conduct this fluid. They all sought the means that science and observation might provide for protection against lightning. Where is the safest refuge during a thunderstorm? Should one stand in the middle of the room or at its corners? Should one not move away from windows and avoid drafts from chimneys? Does a bed built without any iron offer a secure refuge? Are there examples of anyone being struck by lightning in that situation? These questions, and every imaginable question of the same kind, show how much more the sciences interest people through their applications than through theory. They also confirm an observation I have often made: that women, continually mistrusting their own weakness, are more inclined than men to take precautions against every kind of danger. The female portion of my audience was therefore always at least equal to the male. Moreover, the friendship and favor with which Volta had honored me, about whom I have a few more words to say, helped keep my courses popular.

[C14-32 | source PDF 401–402]
It was while Volta was in Paris that gas, now so brilliant a part of the adornment of our shops and bazaars, where its vivid, steady light casts a sort of magical radiance, made its first appearance, or at least announced itself through preliminary trials. These were presented in a way calculated to arouse curiosity; M. Volta and I went together to judge their effects. The experiment took place in the Jardin Byron, in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The entire façade of the house was illuminated by gas issuing from small tinplate pipes arranged around the doors and windows, creating a sort of decorative display, the spectacle of a building illuminated for a public festival. Inside the rooms, the mantelpieces and furniture were adorned with carefully painted tinplate candles from which small, skillfully regulated gas jets emerged. It was an enchantment for the eyes. I do not know why this first attempt did not lead more quickly to the use of so pure and abundant a light. Perhaps the delay resulted from the unfortunate fate of the inventor, M. Lebon. This physicist was murdered one evening while returning home. The circumstances of the murder are not clear enough in my memory for me to give details or base any suspicions upon them here.

[C14-33 | source PDF 402–403]
We did justice to the beautiful effect produced by this gas, but I must say that M. Volta did not believe it would ever be put to useful and habitual use. He thought that clogged pipes and the workmen’s carelessness would always present obstacles. Although the results of this discovery were achieved on a large scale only much later, when it was imported, I believe, as an English invention, Volta lived long enough to recognize his error, for he died only in 1823 or 1824. It will doubtless be regarded as a very singular omission that two physicists whose names will be immortal, Charles and Volta, should be recalled to their century by no article in either the Biographie des contemporains or the Biographie universelle. These omissions should console the petty vanities that complain of finding no place in history, and inspire modesty in men with whom blind fame sometimes concerns itself a little too eagerly.

[C14-34 | source PDF 403–404]
Volta was, moreover, a very simple man in his dress and habits. Burdened with a large family, he had neglected fortune for science; and fortune, which demands attention, had forgotten him. I do not know whether Emperor Napoleon, or rather, to avoid confusing the periods, Consul Buonaparte, who proposed awarding him a medal and then offered a prize of ten thousand francs to stimulate new research into galvanism, also gave him a pension. Such generosity in the manner of Louis XIV would have been worthy of Napoleon, his reign and his magnificence. Indeed, the scholar is a born citizen of every civilized state, since he leaves his discoveries as a common inheritance to the whole world. In what country, for example, is the voltaic pile not found, and what power of decomposition has it not furnished to chemists? Such is the advantage for a discovery of being born in our civilized age: it is immediately tested in every aspect and quickly carried to its furthest results. Thus the following letter, which Volta sent me from Lyon, and in which the nature of galvanism receives fresh confirmation from a fine experiment by Professor Haff, will fittingly conclude all I have thought it necessary to say on this subject:

[C14-35 | source PDF 404–404]
Lyon, 25 Nivôse, Year X.

[C14-36 | source PDF 404–405]
“I duly received the small box containing the electrometer, and the letter that preceded it. I renew my thanks for this fine gift. I did not reply then because I had written to you a few days earlier and had nothing to tell you. Even now I have little news: scholarly communications fail to reach me here. I have learned only that Professor Pfaff, a German who was in Paris during my first month there, who visited me and had fully entered into my ideas, as you have, sir, concerning galvanism, or rather metallic electricity, has lately, in company with Dr. Vanmarum at Harlem, after repeating my other fundamental and demonstrative experiments, performed the striking ones of charging large electrical batteries through simple contact with my pile, as I had recommended to him, being unable to carry out these experiments myself for want of apparatus constructed as I wished. With Dr. Vanmarum he therefore arranged, according to all the rules and precautions I had prescribed, a battery with a hundred and forty square feet of coating. By touching this with a pile of I know not how many pieces, he was able to melt as much as ten inches of iron wire, and even to melt platinum. I do not know the details of these experiments, which must nevertheless have been published in some journals, particularly the Bibliothèque britannique, printed in Geneva, and the Journal de Chimie of Vanmons, published in Brussels, third installment.

[C14-37 | source PDF 405–406]
“I do not know whether we shall remain in Lyon much longer, but we certainly shall not leave for another fortnight.

[C14-38 | source PDF 406–406]
“I send you a thousand good wishes on behalf of my colleague Brugnatelli, and ask you to present my compliments to your wife and your brother. I embrace you, and remain,

[C14-39 | source PDF 406–406]
“Your servant and most affectionate friend.”

[C14-40 | source PDF 406–406]
Alexandre Volta.

Original notes

[C14-N1 | source PDF 385–386]
Félix Nogaret, who had been nicknamed the French Aristaenetus, reached a very advanced age and died only a few years ago. Among his works, the peculiarity of their titles draws attention to The Fruit of My Quest, or Opening the Bag; The Bottom of the Bag; The Earth Is an Animal; Podolyre and Dirphé, or the Crown Hangs by a Garter; The Cronies and the Children, a Whim of Aristaenetus; and so on. Nogaret was, moreover, a writer of independent and very philosophical mind.

[C14-N2 | source PDF 388–388]
In fairness I must say here that M. Pixi, on the Rue du Jardinet in Paris, possesses much more extensive knowledge than his uncle, whom he succeeded. His instruments of physics, which are also more accurate, are esteemed throughout Europe.

Editorial record

The printed heading reads Chapter XIII on p.363. The printed erratum on PDF470, inspected in this run, corrects it to XIV; that correction is applied to the translated title. The p.376 erratum from hygrometer to electrometer is also applied to the English; the French comparison preserves the uncorrected page reading.

Monsieur and citizen carry the social and political joke in Nogaret’s letter. Monsieur is retained where it is the word being discussed. Décadi and duodi, the tenth and second days of the Republican ten-day cycle, are retained. Jean-Jacques and Tancrède remain as printed; no unprinted personal identity or literary explanation is inserted into the author’s letter.

All five unusual Nogaret work titles are translated in the original note, with the French titles preserved in the comparison. Podolyre is corrected from OCR Podoljre after image inspection. The note spans pp.363–364 and is joined without losing its final characterization of Nogaret.

The society’s Year XI date and membership list, including Galvani, are retained as Robertson’s account without silently reconciling their chronology. Source spellings Toussain-Dubreuil, Chompré, Dumotiez, Pixi and Bennet are preserved. Instruments, temperature30 or35 degrees and historical measurements are retained; no temperature scale absent from the source is supplied.

Condenser and electrometer retain the historical apparatus vocabulary. Shell gold translates or en coquille. Cadran métallique et centigrade is rendered metal dial divided into a hundred degrees. Réservoir commun is retained as common reservoir. The source’s glass parallelogram is preserved although the engraving shows a curved enclosure. The chain label is K in print and drawing, not the OCR R. The original figure retains all engraved labels.

The numerical experiments preserve the historical temperature readings without assigning a scale absent from the source. Trente degrés de congélation is rendered thirty degrees below freezing. The malformed density phrase on p.374, la densité de la température et de l’élasticité, is read as three coordinated properties, density, temperature and elasticity; the implied comma is supplied only in English.

The cardboard generator, Volta pistol and cat demonstration are translated as Robertson’s historical descriptions. Aurum musivum remains in Latin; no unprinted chemical identity or modern practical advice is supplied. The two inline apparatus engravings retain source letters and dimensions.

Source spellings Jardin Byron, Vanmarum, Harlem, Vanmons and Alexandre Volta are retained. The narrator prints Haff on p.382, while Volta’s letter prints Pfaff on p.383; both readings are preserved, rather than silently harmonized. Volta’s supposed death in 1823 or 1824, Lebon’s murder and the claim about biographical omissions remain Robertson’s claims and have not been silently fact-corrected.

The final letter is complete, including date, battery coating area, melting tests, periodical references, closing and signature. Its date reads 25 nivôse an X in the image, correcting OCR 2.5. Republican calendar dates remain in source form. The French comparison removes running heads, bookbinding signatures, isolated figure-label OCR and quotation marks attached to block boundaries; it does not remove letter text.

Chapter XV

The Parisians’ love of novelty. The statue of Memnon. The Invisible Girl. Fitz-James the ventriloquist. Scene of the Committee of Public Safety. Magnetism.

[C15-01 | source PDF 407–407]
So much has been said about the Parisians’ love of novelty, their sudden infatuation with everything that strikes their eyes for the first time, and the distaste that so quickly replaces it, that I would say nothing on the subject if my book were not also intended to offer useful advice to young artists drawn to the capital by the hope of making their fortunes there.

[C15-02 | source PDF 407–408]
Indeed, one often sees a host of people who, having nothing to show but a Hero’s fountain, as Rousseau once did, ask only to cover their traveling expenses to Paris and imagine that their jets of water will pour forth the celebrated stream of the Pactolus. How mistaken they are! And how quickly disabused! What do you bring us, young men? Something new, something extraordinary? Very good, but for how many days? Have you more novelties and marvels in reserve? What! You have laid in no stock of these? Then expect to be abandoned within a few weeks, the victims of your own miscalculation, if you hoped to settle in this inquisitive city, or even to remain there a few months.

[C15-03 | source PDF 408–408]
The Parisian wants to see everything and guess everything in a day. His quick, penetrating mind makes him remarkably adept at grasping almost at first sight the smallest details of whatever is shown to him. Once he knows that object, he says: “On to the next!” He swiftly enjoys the effects and would like just as swiftly to enjoy the sight of their mechanisms. The way to keep him interested is therefore to conceal them carefully. Yet the keener his curiosity, the more fleeting it is. So many other objects constantly attract and occupy him that he follows Horace’s precept better than any poet, at least in this sense:

[C15-04 | source PDF 408–408]
Et quæ
Desperat tractata nitescere posse relinquit.

[And what he despairs of making shine by his treatment, he leaves aside.]

[C15-05 | source PDF 408–408]
What he cannot understand, he abandons, and no longer appears to care about it.

[C15-06 | source PDF 408–409]
Thus, however extraordinary my phantasmagorical apparitions may have seemed when they were new, despite the variety I took care to introduce into these illusions through countless scenes of every kind, and despite the interest aroused in my audience by explanations and regular courses in galvanism, my hall would eventually have become deserted had I not taken care to gather in my cabinet everything that seemed likely to offer a new attraction.

[C15-07 | source PDF 409–410]
Two years after I set up my establishment, an acoustic experiment of the greatest simplicity, but ingeniously presented, set all Paris running, provoked a host of explanations more or less wide of the mark, and for a moment almost embarrassed the learned men of society. The Invisible Girl, as the experiment I am speaking of was later called, caused no less stir at the time and gave rise to no fewer conjectures than the celebrated statue of Memnon, about which, after so many dissertations, no certain facts or definite conclusions have been reached. The expansion of air, cooled during the night and warmed by the first rays of the sun in a scorching climate, or, if you prefer, the first contact between the outside air and the air within the statue, at the moment when sunrise changes the temperature of the atmosphere: this seems to me the likeliest cause of that morning murmur, which, according to Pausanias, could best be compared to the sound of a lyre string snapping. [C15-N1]

[C15-08 | source PDF 410–411]
The reader will not be without curiosity about the strange, ridiculous advertisement announcing the great phenomenon of the Invisible Girl with an impudent charlatanry that might have made a fortune in a village, but was very clumsy in the middle of Paris.

[C15-09 | source PDF 411–411]
Discovery of the Invisibility of the Human Body

[C15-10 | source PDF 411–411]
“The search for a means of becoming invisible to human eyes is as old as the world. In every age, people of distinguished merit have made efforts to achieve it, but their researches have always been fruitless. The invisibility of the human body has therefore never existed except in the minds of a few of the common people.

[C15-11 | source PDF 411–411]
“This experiment in physics has just been discovered by a modern physician and presented to a number of physicists, invited by the said inventor to judge the invisibility of his body.

[C15-12 | source PDF 411–412]
“Nothing has ever equaled their astonishment at the sight of this extraordinary spectacle, and all ask for further performances, having convinced themselves that it is impossible to discover the means by which such a phenomenon is produced. At their request, the inventor thought it proper to accept a room they proposed, a room without wall hangings and lit by broad daylight. Convinced that his mystery could not be penetrated, he performed the same operation on the body of a young female citizen, in so astonishing a manner that it was utterly impossible for the physicists and other enthusiasts to glimpse the smallest part of her body. Minds have been stirred and inflamed since this last performance, and all again demand this extraordinary spectacle. As this experiment in physics is about to be repeated in the same room, enthusiasts of both sexes are advised that they may take their places beside the physicists and other learned persons who have paid the expenses of this spectacle, by granting the inventor, as his fee, one and a half francs per person at each performance.

[C15-13 | source PDF 412–412]
“To spare spectators a moment’s waiting, performances will be continuous and repeated without interruption from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon.

[C15-14 | source PDF 412–412]
“The expenses of this spectacle have been paid by learned persons for ten days; when that time has elapsed, the room will close.

[C15-15 | source PDF 412–412]
“The room is in the Cloître Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, entering by the Rue des Prêtres, through the passage of the national lottery agent, on the second floor. It will open on 5 Pluviôse, Year VIII, and close on the 15th.”

[C15-16 | source PDF 412–412]
Laurent, physician.

[C15-17 | source PDF 413–413]
I soon penetrated the mystery of an experiment whose principles are explained in Porta’s Magia naturalis, the book that was my first manual and to which I chiefly owed my taste for experimental physics. In my cabinet it was a great success and attracted many curious visitors, quite respectable people, who seriously wagered that a living person could not remain inside the crystal box suspended by four small chains. Besides, she would have been in a glass house, such as a wise man once wished for, and could have been seen. But where, then, was she? However softly a few words are whispered, she catches them. One breathes her breath and feels its warmth, as some verses I shall quote rather prettily express. They were published on the following occasion:

[C15-18 | source PDF 413–413]
Someone had announced that four statues in the Jardin d’Augny [C15-N2] would hear, speak and carry on a sustained conversation.

[C15-19 | source PDF 414–414]
An enthusiast writing under a pseudonym tried to expose the secret beforehand and published the following anecdote:

[C15-20 | source PDF 414–414]
“One of these newfangled physicists, who aspires one day to the honor of making figures, trees, stones or whatever else speak in the Jardin d’Augny, wished to carry out trials at his home a few days ago. He had a large hole dug in the ground and placed a barrel in it, from which a tinplate pipe led to a figure. He lowered an accomplice into the barrel, which was covered with a plank and an inch of earth. There was our invisible man at work! At first he spoke and answered, but soon he fell silent. They questioned and threatened him, in vain. At last the physicist Rodolphe Jossier, losing patience, lifted the entire apparatus, uncovered the barrel and found his accomplice unconscious. They carried him away and, after tending him, managed to restore the suffocated man to life. Since that most fortunate moment, this honest laborer, having escaped the merchant-physicist’s acoustic science, has been telling anyone who will listen of the danger he ran.”

[C15-21 | source PDF 414–415]
This pleasantry was answered in the following verses, which lack neither grace nor delicacy:

[C15-22 | source PDF 415–416]
For two days I have heard, spoken and replied;
Already secret envy
Hastens to heap insults
Upon the first moments of my life.
Ah! If it is true that my brain
Knows, reasons and takes fire,
Why seek to put my soul
Inside a ridiculous barrel?

My sister and I received existence
On the selfsame day;
Was it Genius or Love
That brought us into being?
I know nothing of it, but I say plainly
That this alone makes ignorance cry out.
To brighten my days, come in throngs,
Charming sex, to hear in turn
The lovely Églé, the young Hortense,
Speak of your charms, of fashions and of love,
And of the great destinies of France.

Let a shy young beauty, serene of brow,
Come speak with me and tell me her sorrow;
She will feel my breath
Warm and revive the roses of her complexion.

And you whom a heartless mistress’s cruelty
Brings each day to dream within my garden,
Come pour your sorrows into my bosom;
I am a woman, it is true, but tender and faithful:
I love, I loved yesterday, and I shall love tomorrow.

An envious man writes against my father;
His jealous fury is unleashed on me.
What have we done to drive him to such despair?
To please the public is our only rule;
To scorn the wicked is our character.

[C15-23 | source PDF 416–416]
R. Jossier, Quérini.

[C15-24 | source PDF 416–416]
As for the Invisible Girl, she puzzled a great many people, as I have said, and we shall see that men distinguished in the sciences did not disdain to investigate and reveal her mysterious secrets. It was at Prague, in 1810, that I wrote her history in the following terms, using the anagram Stéphan. Streborno.

[C15-25 | source PDF 416–416]
History of the Invisible Girl

[C15-26 | source PDF 416–418]
“The experiment of the Invisible Girl was explained seven or eight years ago by M. Nicholson in his Journal of Physics in London. It had been advertised as an experiment in physics; he proved that it was no such thing. Professor and Councillor Hermstaëdt of Berlin also discussed this deception in his interesting Journal of the Arts. An explanation given by Professor Robertson can also be found in a short pamphlet printed in Paris in 1800. We have all the more reason to trust this last author because the experiment formed part of his cabinet of physics, where it was seen and presented for four years, without charlatanry, under the title Acoustic Experiment. Since then it has changed its name and master. It was given the imposing name Invisible Girl, and this invisibility multiplied to such a degree that men had reason to fear all women might take advantage of the talisman. But the government, which would have lost half its domain, put matters right. From the Passage Longueville in Paris, where she had appeared with distinction, she went off to London, then took refuge in the North. An Italian carried her as far as Russia, where she was prohibited a few days after her arrival. A conjurer named Schuart gave her shelter and took her to Berlin, where she could not remain long after the explanations published about her by a journalist, Professor and Councillor Hermstaëdt. Once more she had to take refuge farther north, reaching Kœnigsberg. There a certain Henning, a saddler in a small Prussian town, met her and paid her court. For her sake he gave up making carriages, put her beside him in one of the vehicles from his workshop and brought her back southward as far as Prague. But scarcely had she been on view for eight or ten days when M. Muller and M. Ch. Kinzel, mechanics, supplied her with rivals. After a few efforts to withstand the competition, he again had to close up shop. In truth, the learned woman whom this M. Henning wished to endow with invisibility was the first to joke about the foolish part she was made to play. She spoke a little too much and a little too loudly, and soon the whole town was laughing at the trap and the April fool’s trick. Another misfortune for the poor fugitive! After so many reverses, she had to set out again and seek refuge in Vienna. In that city her many journeys doubtless ended. Certainly no one of her sex has traveled the highways more than she. At first reserved, timid and mysterious, as every young girl is on her entry into society, she has seen the public’s familiarity grow to such a point that today she has nothing more to lose or hope for from her charms.”

[C15-27 | source PDF 418–418]
This experiment, ingenious enough in its way, which I retain in my cabinet of physics at Tivoli, still sometimes arouses curiosity. Though the secret is very simple, one must at least know it. Four lines will suffice to explain it.

[C15-28 | source PDF 418–419]
First, here are the figure and explanation of the original method used in the Rue Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois:

[Original illustration: chapter-fifteen-invisible-box.png]
The first Invisible Girl apparatus. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.397.

[C15-29 | source PDF 419–419]
It presented a glass box X, four feet long and about one foot high, suspended from the ceiling by four small chains, one foot from the window uprights. A speaking trumpet projected from one end of the box, and a wire grating surrounded the entire apparatus to check the prying eyes and hands of the curious.

[C15-30 | source PDF 419–419]
Although this phenomenon then offered a fairly intriguing novelty, it attracted few people because it was not arranged with enough art, and its accessories were not such as to please people of society.

[C15-31 | source PDF 420–420]
The one I had set up in my cabinet was more elegantly arranged:

[Original illustration: chapter-fifteen-invisible-globe.png]
Robertson’s Invisible Girl apparatus. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.398.

[C15-32 | source PDF 420–421]
A globe A of glass or varnished sheet metal, with four horns, hangs in the middle of the room. This globe is not necessary to the experiment; it is there to deceive the imagination. Around it runs a railing or barrier B, which is very necessary, for it is hollow, and through it the voice of our invisible girl is heard. A tinplate pipe runs through upright C as far as D, where there is a small slit or opening opposite the speaking trumpet. This tinplate pipe passes beneath the parquet floor of room E and enters the next room, where the supposed invisible girl speaks and sees everything through the keyhole or another hole made in the wall. That is all there is to the mystery. If four lights are placed opposite the four flared mouths of the speaking trumpets, they are extinguished by the breath coming through the slit I mentioned above.

[C15-33 | source PDF 421–423]
If the word invisible deceived many simple people, a curious anecdote shows that there is little reason to be surprised. Everyone knows how one of the Poinsinets, the author of the charming comedy Le Cercle, made the company he kept laugh through the simplicity of his ignorance and the excess of his credulity. He was deceived about the most commonplace notions, with which he was utterly unfamiliar. Many comic and ridiculous incidents are told of him. It is therefore easy to believe that people had managed to convince him of the reality of the famous ring of Gyges. It was only a short step to persuading him that the Prince de Conti, whose company he was admitted to, possessed such a ring. It had been bought at great expense and was kept in a magnificent box; the prince’s friends appeared to set the greatest store by it and to believe in it completely. Our poet’s imagination catches fire. The more he wishes to see the magic ring, the more care they seem to take to conceal it from him. At last the members of the prince’s circle appoint a day to amuse themselves a little at Poinsinet’s behavior on seeing this ring. It is shown to him with ceremony; he examines and touches it respectfully. He casts furtive glances around him. They deliberately look away, exchange knowing signs; no one seems to be thinking of him or the ring any longer. He slips it secretly onto his finger. Suddenly someone asks where Poinsinet is. How did he leave without being seen? His disappearance seems strange and ill-mannered, but they hope he will return at any moment. The conversation changes. Everyone rises, walks about, comes and goes, bumping more or less roughly into the poor invisible man as he strolls through the drawing room. To test the talisman’s effect better, he plants himself in the walkers’ path. One elbows him, another treads on his heels. He gets off with rubbing his arms and legs, and remains delighted. Dinner is announced. He follows the guests into the dining room, where his place has been kept, since his arrival is still expected. He sits before his place setting, where they deposit now whole dishes, now used plates. They play a thousand tricks on him, which he bears cheerfully until water, wine and sauces stain his clothes and flood his wig. Then he flings away the ring of Gyges in irritation. Everyone cries out at the miracle and is overcome with uncontrollable laughter, while Poinsinet swears never to play the invisible man again.

[C15-34 | source PDF 423–423]
Through the play of light and shadow, it is possible to achieve a kind of invisibility, though not in Poinsinet’s manner, and not for living bodies. Here, for example, is how one may deceive sight, the easiest of all our senses to mislead.

[C15-35 | source PDF 423–424]
At the back of a drawing room hung with black cloth—a theater would be preferable—set in figure A, formed of small slats that turn on their axes like those of shutters. One side of these slats is painted black and blends with the back of the stage; the other represents some person, for example the demonstrator himself. It is prudent to let this figure appear for only a moment, as though skillfully substituted for the very person promising to disappear. To disguise the noise of the change, strike a loud blow while pulling the cord that turns all the slats at once. The success of the illusion depends on the performer’s skill and intelligence. It becomes complete when some small, localized movement is imparted to the figure. The phantasmagorist may announce that he will disappear at the moment he lets his handkerchief fall, and so on.

[Original illustration: chapter-fifteen-vanishing-figure.png]
The vanishing figure. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.402.

[C15-36 | source PDF 424–424]
In matters of acoustics and invisibility, ventriloquism has worked wonders in our day, and it was also in my cabinet that its most curious demonstrations were seen.

[C15-37 | source PDF 424–425]
A man of fine stature and pleasing appearance called on me one morning. He told me he believed himself the natural son of Mademoiselle Dubois, an actress of the Comédie Française, and a former duke; that he served in the mounted gendarmerie; and that he entertained the whole barracks through a peculiarity of his vocal organ. Intended from his youth for the Church, he had discovered while singing at the lectern that he possessed a double voice. He had used this discovery to imitate, in a more or less odd manner, the speech of different individuals. He gave me examples at once and asked whether I thought I could put such a freak of nature to profitable use for him. I understood all the advantage I could gain by directing this truly astonishing faculty in Fitz-James, for it is he of whom I speak, and I bought his discharge, certain that among the illusions of every kind making up my sessions, those he produced would be among the most amusing.

[C15-38 | source PDF 425–426]
No ventriloquist had been heard in Paris for a long time. People barely remembered the Comte de Saint-Germain, whose talent M. de La Chapelle celebrated in L’Engastrimysme. Fitz-James’s debut was a tremendous success and sustained the popularity of my phantasmagoria. Unfortunately he had little wit and was always ready, when he appeared, to utter some low tavern joke. I had great difficulty restraining him, and nothing less than my presence and continual signals could prevent him from indulging this mania for puns. In other respects he surpassed all his predecessors and imitators, and MM. Comte and Borel, who followed him, cannot be regarded as his rivals. When he established a conversation between two people, one supposed to be in the cellar and the other in the attic, the public could not even see his lips move, and one was truly tempted to run to the attic and cellar. At that time newspapers were freely hawked in the streets. Fitz-James imitated the criers with striking accuracy: they seemed to approach the window and gradually recede, with so perfect an illusion that even those best informed about what a ventriloquist’s faculty can produce still doubted and supposed he had accomplices. The following anecdote will give an idea of the degree of imitation he achieved:

[C15-39 | source PDF 426–427]
One day Fitz-James was dining at a restaurant with several friends. Dessert arrived, and the ventriloquist wished to offer the company a sample of his skill. In the middle of the room stood a stove whose pipe led into a sealed fireplace; Fitz-James’s table was beside the fireplace. He began a conversation between himself and someone supposedly shut inside the chimney. The astonished bystanders listened; the proprietor grew frightened; the serving girls went to fetch the guard. Fitz-James kept up the joke. It was taken as certain that a rogue had got into the chimney and could not get out; that he was hungry, confessed his fault and asked for bread while awaiting the punishment he admitted he deserved. The guard arrived and questioned the prisoner. He answered, and they spoke of demolishing the chimney. What did Fitz-James do? He stood beside the stove and spoke, and everyone believed the thief had slipped down the pipe into the stove. The joke had to stop there. Fitz-James revealed his secret to the company; the guard withdrew laughing, and everyone resumed their places at table and in the kitchen, laughing too and congratulating the ventriloquist on the singular gift nature had bestowed upon him.

[C15-40 | source PDF 427–428]
Another time he played much the same trick, attributing it to a draft evader. The poor fellow’s plaintive voice could be heard behind the fireplace screen. People wondered in alarm what it could be. “What does it matter?” said Fitz-James. “One man alone and suffering ought not to frighten us.” He opened the screen and found no one. “Where are you, then?” he cried. “I am escaping,” replied the voice, receding upward. “I am liable for conscription, and you would have me caught.” The laws severely punished anyone who sheltered a draft evader. A police commissioner was summoned; he arrived and had the house surrounded. They went up into the attics; the same voice was heard in neighboring attics and on the rooftops. While everyone was busy searching for the conscript, Fitz-James, then much less well known than he later became, prudently slipped away, so that the police commissioner and the guard at last withdrew in weariness, completely taken in and unaware of it.

[C15-41 | source PDF 428–428]
Did he not once take it into his head, in a cemetery where visitors were examining a tomb, suddenly to make the dead man speak and give the bystanders, so to speak, a cold sweat!

[C15-42 | source PDF 428–428]
At a large dinner one day he was seen speaking mysteriously, yet in an animated tone, to someone who had slipped beneath the table and tried to steal a silver spoon. The conversation was so natural that all the ladies rose, crying, “Thief!”

[C15-43 | source PDF 428–429]
The scenes in which Fitz-James, if he did not produce the greatest effect, at least gave the greatest pleasure, were those he performed behind a screen: the dentist who pulled out all the healthy teeth one after another instead of the decayed one, making his unfortunate patient suffer agonies while congratulating him on now having a clean mouth; the sick man, in which he almost always went too far; and the monks or the monastery, in which spectators heard, with the most distinct and astonishing accuracy, the ringing of the bell, the sound of the organ, the singing of the choirs and so forth.

[C15-44 | source PDF 429–429]
Among the varied scenes I composed for him after Robespierre’s fall, which particularly amused the audience, I shall quote only one, whose success lasted a long time, and which relates to certain manners of the period.

[C15-45 | source PDF 429–429]
The Revolutionary Committee

[C15-46 | source PDF 429–429]
(Fitz-James shows the public that he has only a chair to sit on and a piece of wood. He folds the screen around himself. At first there is complete silence; the clock is heard striking.)

[C15-47 | source PDF 429–429]
THE PORTER.
Well, seven o’clock already! Quick, let’s heat the stove.

[C15-48 | source PDF 429–429]
(Wood is heard being sawn and a flint struck. The fire catches and crackles very realistically.)

[C15-49 | source PDF 429–430]
I think we’ll have a stormy sitting tonight. Caracalla swore to me he had a motion on the tip of his tongue that would cause a stir. What can it be? There’s no bread to be found; our women are in the queue, some of them have been arrested, and we must get them released. That’s it.

[C15-50 | source PDF 430–430]
(A loud noise is heard: the public is arriving. Confused voices. The movement and the noise of footsteps gradually subside.)

[C15-51 | source PDF 430–430]
—To your places! Silence, citizens! The president is about to speak.

[C15-52 | source PDF 430–430]
—Shut up, you loudmouth! We can see that: he’s opening his mouth.

[C15-53 | source PDF 430–430]
THE PRESIDENT.
Today, gentlemen, it is fitting to…

[C15-54 | source PDF 430–430]
THE PEOPLE.
Listen to the president with his “gentlemen”! There are no gentlemen here, President.

[C15-55 | source PDF 430–430]
THE PRESIDENT.
I mean citizens. I have the honor…

[C15-56 | source PDF 430–430]
THE PEOPLE.
What’s that? There’s no honor among us.

[C15-57 | source PDF 430–430]
THE PRESIDENT.
I mean that our brave republican Caracalla, who has saved the republic three or four times, is about to take the tribune.

[C15-58 | source PDF 430–430]
CARACALLA.
Republican citizen, I ask to speak on several things.

[C15-59 | source PDF 431–431]
THE PRESIDENT.
You have them, citizen.

[C15-60 | source PDF 431–431]
CARACALLA.
Citizens, the port of Brest has been at Brest long enough. I demand that it be moved to Paris. It would be much more convenient for getting potatoes by sea, and cheaper too. Besides, the inhabitants of Saint-Denis…

[C15-61 | source PDF 431–431]
A REPUBLICAN.
No more saints.

[C15-62 | source PDF 431–431]
CARACALLA.
The inhabitants of Denis…

[C15-63 | source PDF 431–431]
THE REPUBLICAN.
No more de, either.

[C15-64 | source PDF 431–431]
CARACALLA.
The inhabitants Nis and those of Cloud come to denounce to you the many aristocrats in the armies. First of all, the English horses: no one knows what they have in their souls; they must be discharged. It is a great loss, to be sure, but we can put them to use in the navy, or send them to garrison the colonies, and so on.

[Original illustration: chapter-fifteen-divider.png]


[C15-65 | source PDF 431–432]
I do not believe any of the imitative arts can produce so complete an illusion. It is true that the imitation of the human voice is alive, and the aid of intelligence joins that of the vocal mechanism. Certainly nothing is lacking in Fitz-James’s glory, since he had the celebrated Lalande for his panegyrist. Here is how that learned man expressed himself in a newspaper:

[C15-66 | source PDF 432–433]
“When Lachapelle published his work entitled Les Ventriloques, ou L’Engastrimyste in 1772, I gave a lengthy extract from it in the November Journal des Savans and in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdun. M. de St.-Gilles, a grocer of St.-Germain-en-Laye, had this talent, and the commissioners of the Academy attested that they had experienced a complete illusion as to the distance and direction of the voice. Yet when he came to the Academy of Sciences on 22 December 1770, we did not experience the astonishment that had been promised. Perhaps we were too prejudiced and St.-Gilles too intimidated. But on hearing Citizen Fitz-James at Citizen Robertson’s, I rediscovered everything Lachapelle relates about the ventriloquists mentioned by Van-Dale, Brodeau and other authors. I saw him, beside me, make answers issue from the depths of a stove, the top of the chimney and every other part of the room or adjoining rooms, and I had no doubt about the astonishing stories told in the work cited. But the Baron de Mengen, who possessed the art of the ventriloquist, himself explained the mechanism of air and mouth necessary for this singular and rare art, improperly called the art of ventriloquism.

[C15-67 | source PDF 433–433]
“Lalande.”

[C15-68 | source PDF 433–433]
I need only record Fitz-James’s death here. All Paris, all France knew that he was killed by the Cossacks in 1815 on the heights of Montmartre, on the day that made our allies pay so dearly for the pleasure of contemplating the capital’s walls, yet failed to save Paris.

[C15-69 | source PDF 433–433]
At the height of galvanism’s popularity, I could easily have made the public the dupes of another kind of illusion, quite outside the class of those I performed. I mean magnetism and Mesmer’s tubs. That great operator sent one of his agents to me from London to propose setting up Mesmeric tubs in my cabinet, and he gave me this description of the magical apparatus:

[C15-70 | source PDF 433–434]
“These tubs are filled with broken bottles. A bent iron rod rises from the bottom, and the person being magnetized is attached to it by a chain. By means of a stick, or even by simple manual operations, the magnetizer concentrates the magnetic fluid dispersed through the air and can, at will, communicate it to each individual or make it circulate from one to another.”

[C15-71 | source PDF 434–434]
This agent of Mesmer also showed me a book of engravings, among which I noticed a man facing a tree, the two linked by a metal chain. I asked what the man and the tree were doing there. “They are magnetizing each other,” replied the demonstrator. I burst out laughing and took my leave of the ambassador.

[C15-72 | source PDF 434–435]
I admit it: I have never believed much in magnetism; perhaps I do not believe in it at all. I had asked Mesmer’s agent to operate on me to convert me. He tried in vain, made me yawn for a long time and finally lose patience, but got himself out of the difficulty by telling me I lacked faith. On various occasions I wished to witness these wonders, only to be told that my presence would disturb the operation. When I was allowed to attend, I saw nothing but tricks arranged to deceive the spectators. Thus a man obligingly placed himself in rapport with the magnetizer. He was given a book, and a somnambulist with her eyes closed began to read aloud, without a book, in the opposite corner of the room, the same passage he had before his eyes. Asked how she did it, she replied that she was reading through the eyes of the man placed in rapport with her.

[C15-73 | source PDF 435–435]
It is my principle that we should not rashly set limits to the arts and sciences. But before I am convinced, I ask at least to enjoy the privilege of the shrewdest of Jesus Christ’s disciples, wise Thomas.

[Original illustration: chapter-fifteen-acoustics-tailpiece.png]
Acoustics. Original caption: Acoustique. Volume I, printed p.413.

Original notes

[C15-N1 | source PDF 410–410]
M. de Humboldt says, on trustworthy authority, that when one spends the night near the granite rocks bordering the Orinoco, one distinctly hears, at the sun’s first rays, an underground noise rather like the sounds produced by an instrument. MM. Jollois and Devilliers, who accompanied General Bonaparte as engineers on the Egyptian expedition, made the same observation about a granite monument standing in the middle of the palace of Karnac at Thebes.
Quite recently, M. Gray of Oxford University learned at Tor that three leagues away, on the shores of the Red Sea, in a place called Naïkono, people believed they heard the repeated ringing of an underground bell. He went there to ascertain this singular phenomenon, and indeed a dull, continuous murmur reached his ears. Soon afterward pulsations followed, with such force that the sand scattered over the surface of the rocks gradually shook loose.
M. de Humboldt thinks the noise that seems to issue from the granite rocks near the Orinoco is caused by the difference in temperature between the outside air and the air in the narrow, deep fissures between the rock beds. But whatever the conjectures about the existence of these sounds, would not this fact alone explain what the writers of antiquity have told us about the famous statue of Memnon in Egypt?

[C15-N2 | source PDF 413–413]
This garden still exists in the Rue Grange-Batelière; it belongs to the splendid residence owned by the Comte Aguado. Its walls adjoin my house at No. 12 Boulevard Montmartre.

Editorial record

The printed errata on Volume I PDF470 correct the chapter number on p.385 from XIV to XV and the ventriloquism spellings on pp.402–403. The title is corrected here; p.402 is rendered ventriloquism and the p.403 title uses the erratum’s Engastrimysme. The p.402 uncorrected body reading remains in the French comparison; the p.403 image reads Engastrimysme, as required by the erratum, despite the OCR transposition. The raw source packet remains unchanged. The chapter synopsis calls the scene Committee of Public Safety, whereas its actual heading calls it The Revolutionary Committee; this difference is retained.

The two-line Horace extract is retained in Latin with a bracketed English gloss clearly distinguished from Robertson’s following paraphrase. Hero’s fountain and the Pactolus preserve the original allusions. The Memnon theory and the three-part Humboldt/Gray author note are retained as historical claims; no modern physical explanation is substituted.

Laurent’s entire advertisement is translated, including its price, hours, location, ten-day period, Republican-calendar dates and signature. The Republican dates remain in their original form without a silently supplied modern-calendar date. In the Jardin d’Augny passage, the source reads pariaient, wagered, rather than parlaient, spoke; the English reflects the image.

The full 33-line reply poem is translated without adding rhyme, preserving five stanzas and the final three lines continued on p.394. Its printed signature is R. Jossier, Quérini; OCR Quékiai is corrected. Églé and Hortense remain as printed. The Stéphan. Streborno anagram, Schuart, Henning, Muller, Ch. Kinzel, Kœnigsberg and Hermstaëdt follow the source rather than conjectural modern identities.

The complete satirical history of the Invisible Girl, including its extended personification, is retained as one source paragraph across pp.394–396. The glass box and later globe arrangement are separate mechanisms, with separate original figures. In the latter drawing C and D differ in placement from the prose, and E in the prose is not visibly labeled in the engraving; neither text nor drawing has been redesigned to agree.

All dialogue turns and stage directions of The Revolutionary Committee are retained. The nonsensical reply You have them follows the source’s Tu les as. The renaming joke successively removes Saint and De from Saint-Denis; de is also the French word for of and a particle associated with noble names. The deliberately broken inhabitants Nis preserves the joke, and the later surviving de in ceux de Cloud is retained as of Cloud rather than repaired. The English reproduces colloquial register without inventing a regional dialect.

Fitz-James’s supposed parentage, the Comte de Saint-Germain reference, Lalande’s differing St.-Gilles account, the dates 1772 and 1770 and the death dated 1815 all remain the source’s assertions without silent chronological or biographical correction. The source title in Lalande’s extract is Engastrimyste, distinct from the erratum-corrected Engastrimysme earlier in the chapter.

Magnetism here means the historical Mesmeric practice. Somnambulist and rapport retain its vocabulary. Robertson’s skepticism, his request for personal evidence and his allusion to Thomas are translated in full; the account is not turned into a modern medical claim. The caption Acoustique beneath the original final engraving is translated as Acoustics in the figure caption.

Chapter XVI

Extracts from the letters of M. Nahuys of Breda to his friend Robertson.

[C16-01 | source PDF 436–436]
Readers who take no interest in the details of optical procedures and experiments should skip this chapter, which contains observations useful for the accuracy of phantasmagoria instruments.

[C16-02 | source PDF 436–436]
Extracts from the Letters of M. Nahuys [C16-N1]

[C16-03 | source PDF 436–436]
Camera Obscura in Which Objects Are Not Inverted
(Fig. I.)

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-i.png]
Figure I. Camera-obscura tube. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.414.

[C16-04 | source PDF 436–437]
A (fig. 1) is a tube eleven inches long and three inches in diameter. d is a diaphragm one inch in diameter, serving to prevent light not coming from the object from illuminating the tube.

[C16-05 | source PDF 437–437]
a is the objective lens, with a focal length of seven inches and an aperture of thirteen lines, convex on both sides, placed one and three-quarter inches from diaphragm d.

[C16-06 | source PDF 437–437]
B. Second tube, six inches long. At the end that enters tube A is placed the intermediate lens b, with a focal length of five inches and a diameter of two and a half inches. One inch from it is diaphragm e, whose aperture is two inches and two lines. This tube is pushed far enough into tube A for the image formed by the objective to appear exactly there, that is, at about five and three-quarter inches. This can be tested by temporarily placing oiled paper in front of the diaphragm. Lens b is plano-convex.

[C16-07 | source PDF 437–437]
C. Third tube, with a plano-convex lens at its end, of five and a quarter inches focal length and one inch aperture. f is a diaphragm with a slightly larger aperture, serving only to exclude from the lens all light not coming from the object.

[C16-08 | source PDF 437–438]
Make a hole in the shutter of a room thoroughly shut against daylight. Pass the tube through it, wrapped in a black silk handkerchief to prevent light entering through the hole. The hole must be oval so that all the objects in view can be made to appear successively on a frame of white paper, or on framed ground glass, mounted on a device that can be lowered and raised. Beneath the hole, fit a support to the shutter on which the tube can rest. If the frame is placed one foot from the end of the tube, a sharply bounded circle of two and a half inches appears on it, within which the objects are depicted. By moving the frame away from the tube and pushing tube C inward, this circle can be made to pass through every size up to fourteen inches in diameter, the objects growing in proportion. The circle always remains sharply bounded, since it is always at the same position as the image formed in diaphragm e.

[C16-09 | source PDF 438–438]
Animated Phantasmagoria (Fig. I.)

[C16-10 | source PDF 438–439]
I saw at once that, to obtain on the screen a life-size image of a living person, I had only to widen the field and increase the light. But this aim could not be achieved without infringing the laws of optics, which do not allow a lens an aperture greater than half its focal length, and which prescribe that the radius of the aperture of a camera-obscura lens should be the square root of one-fiftieth of its focal length in inches, and may be increased by a third if the light is found too weak. You see that in constructing my camera obscura I followed these rules very closely. But I knew from experience that lenses can be given a much larger aperture by lamplight. In the evening, for example, I give my megascope lens an aperture of three and a half inches; when I use it in sunlight, I cover it with a cardboard ring having an aperture of only two inches and two lines. This lens has a focal length of twenty-six inches; its radius must therefore be √(36/50) = 0.52, 0.72. Tripling this radius gives approximately two inches and two lines.

[C16-11 | source PDF 439–440]
My trials showed that it was necessary to give the lenses of my tube for animated phantasmagoria a much larger aperture still, because the light was greatly weakened in passing through so many media, and especially through reflections at so many surfaces. Here, then, is the result of my researches. (See figures II and III below.)

[C16-12 | source PDF 440–440]
Tube a is similar to figure I on page 414, with the following differences:

[C16-13 | source PDF 440–440]
Tube A is eight to nine inches long and four inches in diameter. Objective a, with a focal length of fourteen inches, has a diameter of three and a half inches.

[C16-14 | source PDF 440–440]
Tube B, which carries the plano-convex intermediate lens of five and a half inches focal length and the same diameter as the objective, is inserted far enough into tube A for the intermediate lens to be five inches from the objective. Tube B is eight inches long.

[C16-15 | source PDF 440–440]
Tube C is eleven inches long and carries at its end, instead of lens c, two lenses, each of thirteen inches focal length and two and three-quarter inches diameter, placed one inch apart.

[C16-16 | source PDF 440–440]
I omit the diaphragms because, as the lenses are to receive only light coming from the object, there is no extraneous light to exclude and no need for a circle.

[C16-17 | source PDF 440–441]
I observe, both concerning this tube and concerning the camera obscura: 1. The lenses must be superbly worked and finished to the highest degree; 2. The arc passing through the centers of all the lenses must be a straight line; 3. When I have spoken of plano-convex lenses, I mean plano-convex lenses, but with their convexities in a ratio of six to one: these lenses have the least possible aberration of convexity; 4. The greater convexity must always face the incident rays.

[C16-18 | source PDF 441–441]
The room in which I work is divided in two by a partition containing a square opening two and a half feet across, its center at a height of two and three-quarter feet.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-ii-iii.png]
Figures II and III. Animated phantasmagoria apparatuses. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.419.

[C16-19 | source PDF 442–442]
In front of this opening is a kind of bellows composed of six lath frames d, covered with black dimity and closed at the front by a board b, which carries the tube and lenses. This board and the frames are suspended from cords attached by rings to two highly polished iron rods. By means of this apparatus the tube can be brought to within five feet of the screen. By means of the wooden handle c (fig. IV), the board can be turned in every direction, making the image move right or left, upward or downward. The board and bellows are attached to the partition by two wooden hooks (No. 6) and two small iron rods fastened to the board (No. 5).

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-iv.png]
Figure IV. Tube fittings. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.420.

[C16-20 | source PDF 442–443]
The square opening in the partition cannot be smaller than two and a half feet, because the outermost rays from the object would then be unable to fall on the objective at its greatest distance.

[C16-21 | source PDF 443–444]
I place the object l (fig. II) eight and a half feet from the partition. It must be illuminated on one side by twelve good Argand lamps, each fitted with a silver-plated copper reflector nine to ten inches in diameter and with a focal length of two to two and a half inches. These lamps are hung on a screen h (fig. V) so that the rays from all the reflectors fall upon the object. The lamps are arranged in four rows of three, thus four one above another. To prevent a lower lamp from damaging the one above it, a curved piece of sheet metal is fitted a little above each of the nine lower chimneys. On the other side, the object is illuminated by only four lamps without reflectors, hung on a similar screen. I illuminate one side strongly to represent sunlight, and the other weakly to represent daylight. If the light were equally strong on both sides, the image would have no shadows and would appear flat. I do much the same with the inverted objects of the megascope, lighting them strongly on one side with several lamps placed a foot and a half below the object, and on the other with just two candles.

[C16-22 | source PDF 444–444]
To cast an even stronger light on the head and chest of the living object, I also place a concave glass mirror eighteen inches in diameter on a long wooden arm attached to the partition, and a large Argand lamp f (fig. II) a little inside its focus. Figure V shows the arrangement of the screens, lamps, object, and bellows fitted against the partition.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-v.png]
Figure V. Lamp and reflector arrangement. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.422.

[C16-23 | source PDF 444–445]
In this position, the object is projected at its natural size onto the screen, which stands thirteen feet from the partition. By lifting the hooks, the image can be raised or lowered at will and moved right or left across the entire width of the screen. By bringing the tube toward the screen and gradually drawing out tube C, the image is reduced from five feet to eight or nine inches after an advance of eight feet. At every distance it is well defined, but especially when small. More light might be wished for, but I see no satisfactory way of increasing it, unless perhaps by enlarging the diameter of the lamp wicks. Messrs. Girard, at No. 267 rue de la Loi, have advertised lamps whose light equals fifty candles or more, and whose flame is as white and as steady as that of the smallest lamps.

[C16-24 | source PDF 445–445]
Since it is very difficult to raise and lower the wick in a lamp constructed in the usual manner, because the reflectors prevent access to the gearing, I have lamps in which the wick is raised and lowered by a worm screw turned beneath the lamp.

[C16-25 | source PDF 445–445]
M. Schirmer’s Method (Fig. III, p. 419)

[C16-26 | source PDF 445–446]
His tube A is six inches in diameter. At the end facing the object it carries two wooden rings in which four plano-convex lenses are mounted in pairs, arranged as shown in No. 4 of figure IV. Each has a focal length of twelve inches and a diameter of four inches; the two rings touch. He has no intermediate tube B (fig. I), and at the end of his tube C, instead of lens C, are two plano-convex lenses, each of eight inches focal length and three and a half inches aperture, also mounted in a wooden ring, so that their convex surfaces almost touch it.

[C16-27 | source PDF 446–446]
You see that he has departed much further than I have from the rules of dioptrics, and he has not done so without paying the price: his images were very far from equaling mine. But the shallow depth of his theater partly forced him to do this.

[C16-28 | source PDF 446–448]
His method of reducing and enlarging the image was preferable to mine in being simpler and more portable. His theater was only seven feet deep, and was closed at the back by a thick black cloth called trillich in German, which I believe is coutil in French. In this cloth was a circular opening four feet in diameter, to which a cone of the same cloth was sewn. At its apex was an iron ring through which the tube carrying the lenses slid with a friction fit. A mechanism was attached to iron ring c, allowing the tube to be lowered and raised by loosening screw h (fig. III), while the cylindrical iron pivot, inserted into the hollow wooden pillar C, allowed it to turn right and left. The center of the cone and tube was also about two and three-quarter feet high. The cloth of the funnel or cone is supported at its middle by two cords with counterweights, passing through two rings fixed to the ceiling. The object, lit in much the same way as mine, stood only six and a half feet from the black cloth. I advised him, since the outermost rays from the object struck the objective too obliquely, to move the object back two feet, remove one of the four twelve-inch lenses, and place the other two five inches from the single objective. He followed my advice, and his images appeared much better on the screen than before. The two front lenses, having together a focal length of four inches, were also too large and too convex, which could only impair the sharpness of the image. But, as I have said, he was confined to this short focal length if he wished to present a life-size image on the screen, which was only seven feet from the back, where the tube stood at its greatest distance. The gigantic head, or grimacing man, can be produced by either method. One sits on a stool facing the objective, two and a half feet away; the head is illuminated on one side by four reflectors, and on the other by two lamps without reflectors. The grimacing man can pour himself wine and drink the company’s health; he can hold up a candlestick with a lighted candle. By advancing four or five inches with his mouth open, he seems to spring at everyone to bite them, those in the middle as well as those to the right and left, and so on.

[C16-29 | source PDF 448–449]
(Fig. VI.) Professor Charles’s method is scarcely worth discussing. It is obvious that an image cannot be projected distinctly onto the screen in this way. Supposing point D of the object to be sharply projected onto the screen at its conjugate focus d, the head A, being much closer to the lens, will not be projected at a, but somewhere at h, beyond the screen; conversely, the feet B, being farther away than the head by four times the distance B F, will be projected somewhere at f, in front of the screen. Indeed, he has never shown even a presentable image.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-vi.png]
Figure VI. Professor Charles’s method. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.427.

[C16-30 | source PDF 449–449]
M. Nahuys to His Friend Robertson
14 November 1813

[C16-31 | source PDF 449–450]
Do not expect, then, to obtain with your tube the same effect as with the simple megascope. You know that the laws of dioptrics require the half-aperture of a camera-obscura lens to be the square root of one-fiftieth of its focal length, measured in inches, and that the largest aperture such a lens can be given is obtained by tripling this radius to give the full diameter, if the required sharpness of the image is to be preserved. According to these laws, the objective of fourteen inches focal length should have an aperture of only nineteen lines; the eyepiece lenses of thirteen inches focal length, which together act as a lens of six and a half inches, should have an aperture of only fourteen and a half lines. I also said that the largest aperture a lens can be given must not exceed half its focal length; this concerns only the intermediate lens of one and a half inches focal length, which should therefore have a diameter of only two and three-quarter inches. It was on these principles that I constructed my camera obscuras, whose images are quite distinct.

[C16-32 | source PDF 450–452]
But since the loss of light through these small apertures is appalling, it was impossible to perform the experiment I wanted with them. As I have said, I was therefore obliged to depart from these laws and give the lenses much larger apertures to obtain greater brightness, sacrificing perfect sharpness. The larger the aperture given to the lenses, the less distinct the object becomes, but the brightness increases in proportion. I tried to find a happy medium, and the result was that the lenses should be given only the apertures indicated, so as not to lose too much brightness. My fourteen-inch lens has an aperture of three and a half inches; you tell me yours is four inches and nine lines. My thirteen-inch lenses have an aperture of two and three-quarter inches; yours are four inches. Cover your fourteen-inch lens and one of the two thirteen-inch lenses, then, with rings of blackened cardboard. You will have less light but greater sharpness, although it would be vain to expect the same clarity as with the megascope. I remember, however, that when I first tried my tube, the image of my wife, who was serving as the object, was so well projected onto the screen that, in my excitement at the success, I spoke to the image, thinking I was speaking to my wife, who was in fact more than twenty feet away from me, with a partition between us. Do not be alarmed, then, by the lack of definition in your candle, but make the following trial: have someone place their head two feet from the objective lens. Illuminate the head with four lamps fitted with good parabolic reflectors, three on one side of your tube and the fourth on the other. When the tube containing the two thirteen-inch lenses is focused for an object eight feet away, draw it out about an inch. You will see the head on the screen, enlarged fourfold in diameter, bright and distinct enough to satisfy you, especially if you do not stand too close to the screen.

[C16-33 | source PDF 452–453]
I return once more to animated phantasmagoria. Since, for the reasons already given, it is impossible to obtain as much brightness as with the megascope, and the megascope is always less bright than the magic lantern, I always began with animated phantasmagoria, went on to the megascope, and finished with the lantern. When I combined the lantern with the two preceding apparatuses, I reduced its aperture enough to make the brightness approximately equal. I very often began with Charlotte at Werther’s Tomb. Using my fantascope with a very small aperture, I placed a funeral urn on one side of the screen, on a pedestal shaded by a weeping willow. Through the tube I brought Charlotte from the distance, slowly approaching the tomb, handkerchief in hand, expressing her grief through her gestures. When she was life-size, I turned the tube slightly, which she can readily see, and brought her close to the pedestal. She then rests her elbow on it, supporting her head on the hand holding the handkerchief. She remains in this position a moment, then falls to her knees, rises, and turns her back to the tube, appearing to walk slowly away. This scene never failed to win enthusiastic applause, though I did not have M. Girard’s lamps. I think those who believe in ghosts do not imagine them radiant with light; it is enough, therefore, that the images can be clearly distinguished.

[C16-34 | source PDF 453–453]
Sir Nahuys de Burgst to Sir Robertson
18 November 1812

[C16-35 | source PDF 453–454]
My worthy friend, I was very surprised to see that you had used the same method for making human figures upright that I employed at first, but abandoned in favor of my optical tube. The reduced drawing overleaf shows how I combined the megascope with the concave mirror. You see that the arrangement is exactly the same as yours, except that I used a plane mirror E, which brings to a the human figure placed at A, whereas you bent your partition as at H to place the figure directly at a. I certainly thought of doing this, but I would have narrowed the space between the screen and the partition too much; besides, I needed that space to receive my guests when these experiments were not being performed. Please give me a description of M. Cayeux’s eugraph, or camera obscura. Since mutual friendship and tastes unite you, you will be able to obtain an exact description from him.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-vii.png]
Figure VII. Megascope with mirrors. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.432.

[C16-36 | source PDF 454–454]
Breda, 27 February 1813

[C16-37 | source PDF 454–456]
My most honored sir, I too may ask: what opinion will you have of me for leaving your delightful letter of 1 December 1812 unanswered? It is certainly not from lack of interest, for receiving your letters and answering them is a real pleasure to me. But every day I intended to write, some impediment arose; your latest letter has made me resolve to delay no longer. Here, then, is, first, the description of the polyscope, with which the witches’ dance can be performed using colored figures in the round. Figure VIII shows the section or profile of a box three feet four inches square and two feet six inches high. In its front side, a little off-center, is a circular opening thirteen inches in diameter. In front of this, a wooden disk fourteen inches across and one inch thick is made to rotate, either by fitting it with a cardboard tube that enters another fixed to the box, or by turning it between four pulleys. The disk carries nine small cardboard tubes containing nine lenses two inches in diameter and twelve inches in focal length. These tubes are arranged so that the axes of the lenses meet sixteen inches from the disk. At this point are placed the figures to be shown, fastened by their feet to small round sticks that fit into holes in a small lath. Another round stick is attached to this lath; it fits and can turn in a hole made in a sliding piece, which moves between two grooves and covers a slot a good inch wide and fourteen to fifteen inches long, situated above the center of the disk. This sliding piece is two and a half inches wide. By means of this mechanism, the figures can be moved forward and backward and turned either singly or both at once.

[C16-38 | source PDF 456–456]
On the left side, the box is closed only by a double curtain of black cloth, attached at the top and sides of the box and hanging down to the floor of the room. A semicircular cutout twenty inches in diameter is made in the bottom board to accommodate the operator’s body during the experiments. A black curtain attached to this cutout hangs down to the floor. Directly above the cutout, at the lid of the box, is a semicircular iron rod carrying, on small rings, a black curtain that hangs only as far as the bottom of the box. This is opened after entering and closed before leaving; in this way one can enter and leave without allowing light to penetrate the room. The box rests on a wheeled stand, so that it can be moved forward and backward.

[C16-39 | source PDF 457–457]
Explanation of the Polyscope
(Fig. VIII.)

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-viii.png]
Figure VIII. The polyscope. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.435.

[C16-40 | source PDF 457–457]
(Fig. 1) a, the disk; e, 5, 8, the three middle lenses; b, the round sticks to which the figures are attached; c, the other round stick, which turns in the sliding piece; d, the slot, a good inch wide and fourteen to fifteen inches long; e, the sliding piece covering the slot; f, two figures whose height must not exceed six inches; g, a cardboard tube to keep light away from the lenses; L, the wheeled stand; I, black cardboard behind which the figures to be shown are placed.

[C16-41 | source PDF 457–457]
(Fig. 2) The round opening covered by the disk containing the nine small tubes with their lenses; O, a hole fitted with a cardboard cone through which to see on the screen whether the figures are in focus; iiii, four lamps with reflectors, three on one side and one on the other.

[C16-42 | source PDF 458–458]
(Fig. 3) Bottom board: the cutout for the operator’s body and the board for concealing the figures.

[C16-43 | source PDF 458–458]
See, in the explanation of the fantascope, the section of the chimneys that allow air to escape freely while preventing light from passing through.

[C16-44 | source PDF 458–459]
With this machine, which I call a polyscope, one can perform the witches’ dance, waltzes, and so forth. It can also be used as a simple megascope by capping the eight small tubes and leaving only the middle one open, with the further advantage that a figure six inches high can pass through every size up to five and a half feet. By moving the figures to a distance of two feet from the lenses and bringing the box to within two feet of the screen, the image will be the same size as the object. By bringing the figures to within thirteen and a half inches of the lenses and moving the box to a distance of twelve feet from the screen, the image will be five and a half feet high. Figure 1 shows the box ready to perform a waltz. First place it two feet from the screen, with the figures facing forward, two feet from the lenses. Move them gently forward to sixteen inches while backing the box away to four feet from the screen. The figures will then be eighteen inches high. Using the two sticks b, turn the figures a quarter-turn so that they face one another. Have a waltz played, and while your assistant slowly turns the disk, turn stick c. Leave only one of the outer lenses uncovered, No. 7 for example, and the two figures will appear to waltz around a circle on the screen. Uncover No. 4, No. 1, No. 2, and so on in succession, keeping No. 5 closed throughout, and you will have sixteen figures on the screen. For the witches’ dance, present four figures with both hands, moving them while the assistant turns the disk, now to the right, now to the left. Change the figures from time to time, and when all the lenses are uncovered you will have thirty-six figures on the screen. To operate it, one must be dressed in black, with a black cravat, black gloves of darkened chamois leather, and black crape over the face.

[C16-45 | source PDF 459–459]
Accept the assurance of the friendship I have pledged you.
Nahuys de Burgst.

[C16-46 | source PDF 460–460]
Method for Making the Figure Upright Without a Prism

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-divider.png]


[C16-47 | source PDF 460–460]
When one wishes merely to make the human figure upright, without making it pass through different sizes, which is impossible with a single megascopic lens, there is a more reliable means than the prism, as my method shows. I include the drawing here; it clearly shows how the three mirrors make the object upright. When the three mirrors are enclosed in a box, one need only hang it in front of a circular opening in the partition; it can be raised a little so that the object and image are at the same height.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-ix.png]
Figure IX. Making the figure upright without a prism. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.438.

[C16-48 | source PDF 461–462]
It should be observed that angle d a c can never exceed twenty degrees. It would be vain to try to enlarge this angle by enlarging the mirrors: the mirrors would obstruct one another, preventing the rays from passing through the opening between a and b. This twenty-degree angle also accords perfectly with the rules of optics, which require that the diameter of the object for the megascope should be no greater than one-third of its distance from the lens. Thus, to obtain an image the same size as an object six feet high, the object must be placed eighteen feet from the lens, and a lens of nine feet focal length used to produce the image on the screen eighteen feet away on the other side. It makes no difference whether the object is placed on the mirror side or the lens side. Since about three feet are gained through the reflections of the mirrors, it can be put on either side as the room permits. When there is not a distance of fifteen feet on one side of the partition and eighteen on the other, the distance can be varied while still obtaining a life-size image on the screen. For example, if you have eighteen feet on one side and only nine on the other, place a child four feet tall eight and a half feet from the mirrors. Using a lens of seven and one-fifth feet focal length, you will obtain a six-foot image on the screen eighteen feet away. If you wish the child’s image to be only five and a half feet high, the distance can be reduced further, from eighteen feet to sixteen and a half. With the child placed eight and a half feet away, a lens of six and eighteen-nineteenths feet focal length must therefore be used. All this is calculated by very simple algebraic formulas. The same box and mirrors, hung from a window shutter, form a camera obscura that places images vertically on a frame, far better than the best prism could do. If a lens of three or four feet focal length were to be used for this purpose, one inch in diameter would be more than sufficient, and the three mirrors, together with the distances between them, could be reduced by half.

[C16-49 | source PDF 462–463]
I like the idea of your hexagonal temple with twelve large plane mirrors. Please tell me what objects you have placed in the temple’s six openings. In such a temple, with mirrors six feet high, two people placing themselves in one of the porticoes would find themselves at a round table with twelve people. Similarly, if the other box you mention were made with four plane mirrors six to seven feet high, three or four soldiers could be made to drill in it, and a great army would be seen. I remind you, my friend, that you still owe me descriptions of many fine things you have promised me. Among others, in your letter of 8 August 1814, when speaking of your polemoscope in the cellar, you promise me a far more wonderful and entirely new experiment, which you conceived fifteen years ago but which still presented difficulties to overcome.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-tailpiece.png]


[C16-50 | source PDF 464–464]
Continuation of the Note on Page 137

[C16-51 | source PDF 464–464]
On page 137 I promised to describe the small piece of furniture I had invented for writing without the aid of sight, which I named the noctograph because it is intended above all to provide a means of setting down on paper the fleeting thoughts of the night. Night, Homer said, is a good counselor, and every poet can testify how many beautiful inspirations blossom on the pillow only to be lost, so to speak, in its down. The report that discussed my noctograph sufficiently indicates its advantages, so I shall confine myself here to a simple description.

[C16-52 | source PDF 464–464]
Many others before me have doubtless felt the need for an aid of this kind and have met it by various means. “So you have little parallel guides that you place on the paper to guide your hand,” Voltaire wrote to the blind Madame Dudefant. “With this aid you no longer need a secretary; you need only someone to read to you.”

[C16-53 | source PDF 464–465]
With the aid of my noctograph, one can be sure of writing with closed eyes without disorder in the words or lines, which remain evenly spaced. One can leave off writing with the certainty of replacing the pencil after a word already written. This invention has been very useful to me on several occasions, and it has played a part in some of the recollections contained in these Memoirs.

[C16-54 | source PDF 465–465]
The memory of facts is an inexplicable faculty: a trifle brings it back, and a trifle also makes it flee, especially as physical strength weakens. Hearing, and particularly sight, which give it great assistance, are the first to cease serving it. The noctograph will be appreciated at every age.

[C16-55 | source PDF 465–465]
As can be seen here, the noctograph has the form of a writing desk about a foot long and eight inches wide.

[Original illustration: chapter-sixteen-fig-x.png]
Figure X. The noctograph. Original engraving, Volume I, printed p.443.

[C16-56 | source PDF 465–466]
This desk, or rather the box shaped like one, is represented by A. Its upper part opens at will; inside are two cylinders. To the first, B, is glued the end of a sheet of paper, or of several sheets joined end to end, of a width suited to the box.

[C16-57 | source PDF 466–466]
The other end of this paper is attached to cylinder C. Turning this cylinder from right to left winds the paper onto it and tensions the coil spring inside roller B. The paper, itself held taut, is thus ready to wind onto roller B when pawl H is lifted. The small gear at the end of this cylinder has spacing corresponding to the interval required between the lines to be written on the paper. Consequently, each time a line is written, lifting the pawl advances the paper by one line’s space, while slide G, closed to a greater or lesser degree, marks where the writing stopped. Immediately beneath the paper is a small board D. Inside lid A, over opening E, is a square of parchment lightly coated with black pigment and a greasy substance, facing the paper, which receives the characters traced by a stylus. Across the middle of the opening is a taut, slightly flexible brass wire.

[C16-58 | source PDF 466–467]
My memory does not supply the details needed to give a very exact account of the hydraulic machine I had devised, which is mentioned in the same report. I remember only that it rested on the well-established law that liquids exert weight in proportion to their base and height. According to this principle, what force could resist the pressure of a column of water thirty to forty feet high? A very small quantity of water poured into a narrow tube of that height would suffice to burst an iron-hooped barrel to which the tube was connected.

[C16-59 | source PDF 467–467]
End of the First Volume

Original notes

[C16-N1 | source PDF 436–436]
These letters are arranged here by subject, not by date.

Editorial record

The chapter number XV on p.414 is corrected to XVI, and poluscope on p.432 to polyscope, following the printed errata on PDF470. The original uncorrected polyscope paragraph is retained in frUncorrected. Nahuys and Breda correct OCR errors in the heading.

The historical optical specifications retain every stated length, diameter, aperture, distance and lens letter. Inches and lines are not converted to modern units. The lens field is rendered radius where the source says demi-diamètre. The three-tube camera obscura and altered phantasmagoria tube remain separate apparatus descriptions.

The p.417 expression visibly reads a square-root sign followed by 36/50 = 0.52, 0.72. Native JP2 leaf463 was downloaded and a crop independently inspected; the numerator is 36, despite the preceding twenty-six-inch focal length and the value0.52. The English preserves the printed arithmetic as √(36/50) = 0.52, 0.72, without silently making it mathematically consistent. The source’s increase by a third and subsequent tripling are also both retained. Formula evidence is production/source-proof/v1-p439-formula.png; original master illustrations/v1-leaf463-source.jp2.

On p.419 the source says arc, not axe, while requiring it to be a straight line; arc is retained in English. The same passage calls the lenses plano-convex while describing convexities in the ratio six to one. The awkward verres de convexités is rendered their convexities, but the internal contradiction is not redesigned or silently corrected. The original paragraph should be considered alongside its image and drawing.

Basin noir is translated black dimity. Original drawings I–X, including combined figures II/III, and the original ornaments are inventoried separately; their labels are excluded from the prose alignment where reproduced with the artwork.

The letters remain in their printed thematic order, as the author note requests. The date Breda, 27 February 1813, printed below figure VII on p.432 but absent from the OCR, has been restored. The heading Sir is retained as printed. No date is invented for the separate prism-free method that follows the signed letter.

On p.428 the intermediate lens is explicitly stated to have a focal length of one and a half inches but a diameter of two and three-quarter inches, unlike the five-and-a-half-inch specification on p.418. Both values are retained. The awkward ne doit excéder que la moitié is read in the sense of the previously stated half-focal-length limit. Tripling a radius to produce the allowed full aperture is retained as described, without modernizing the rule.

PDF452 is printed 730, an evident page-number error in the continuous sequence 429, 730, 431; source references use sequence p.430 with this disclosure. There is no missing text or missing physical page at this point.

In the polyscope key on p.435, the first of the three middle-lens labels is printed e, followed by 5 and 8, although the figure appears to label the first lens 2. The printed e is retained. L and I are read as the stand and black-card labels from the original lettering; the four lamp labels iiii are preserved. Figure numbers1–3 belong within the composite figureVIII.

The noctograph cylinder is C in print on p.444, not the OCR G; slide G is distinct. The source’s semicolon after roller B divides an awkward conditional; English places when pawl H is lifted with the immediately preceding description and then states the gear spacing separately. The mechanism is not supplemented with invented parts.

Plancher above the suspended cone on p.425 is rendered ceiling, as the cords and counterweights hang from the overhead structure. Trillich and coutil are retained as the author’s German and French cloth names. Chamois bronzé is rendered darkened chamois leather; no modern coating recipe is inferred.

The two sections after the Nahuys correspondence are preserved in source order: the prism-free three-mirror method, followed by the continuation of the note on p.137. Their original headings distinguish them from the correspondence. The table of contents mislocates the latter section at p.441, whereas its heading actually begins at p.442.

The noctograph section preserves Dudefant as printed rather than silently normalizing the name. The hydraulic claim at the end remains the author’s formulation. No modern engineering claims have been added.

The historical focal lengths seven and one-fifth feet and six and eighteen-nineteenths feet, twenty-degree limit, dimensions, lamp counts, and image multiplications are retained exactly. The earlier discontinuous technical sample overlaps these now complete passages and remains excluded from cumulative manuscript counts.

Volume I: Original Contents and Errata

[V1B-01 | source PDF 468–468]
Contents of This Volume

[Original illustration: v1-back-matter-contents-divider.png]


[V1B-02 | source PDF 468–468]
Preface — i

[V1B-03 | source PDF 468–468]
Chapter I. Ab ovo, like everyone else. First memories. An accident. The laureate of Louvain. A little electrical apparatus and a little fame. Childish and entertaining observations on natural history. A prize for painting. A decision to leave. — 1

[V1B-04 | source PDF 468–468]
Chapter II. Walter Scott and the people of Liège. Their privileges and rebellions. The great favor enjoyed by beer. The history of coal and its extraction. Early steam engines. Deville and Renkin. The painter Lairesse. Grétry. — 17

[V1B-05 | source PDF 468–468]
Chapter III. Chest complaints at Liège. The delightful gardens of Renvoy. Our Lady of Liesse and others. Shifting ground. Entry into France. Ermenonville. An Englishman lost and found. — 52

[V1B-06 | source PDF 468–468]
Chapter IV. The face of Paris. The revolution in hair powder. Mademoiselle Dervieux and the Comte d’A*****. Lucienne and Dubarry. Pascal Tasquin. Little cameos. M. Brisson’s physics course. An example of innocence. Minister Bénézech. The celebrated M. Charles. — 66

[V1B-07 | source PDF 468–468]
Chapter V. The execution of Marie-Antoinette. Monsieur Delaporte, administrator of the Civil List. The notary Prédicant. Balls at the Hôtel Richelieu. An involuntary Titus cut. The two Italians. The valet. Madame Chevalier’s arrest. Monsieur de Sallabéry’s arrest prevented. Messieurs de Mortagne and de La Tremblay. The sham robbers. Return to Liège. Monsieur Villette’s burning mirror. — 85

[V1B-08 | source PDF 468–469]
Chapter VI. The explosion of the Grenelle powder magazine. Kirker’s experiments on Archimedes’ mirror. Buffon’s experiments. My research on this mirror. My success. Recommendations and departure for Paris. A commission appointed by the Institute. — 121

[V1B-09 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter VII. First ideas for phantasmagoria. The advantages and usefulness of experimental physics. Old books on magic. The Occult Sciences, by Monsieur Salverte. Trials in the nomes of Egypt. Phantasmagoria among the Egyptian priests and the Greeks. — 143

[V1B-10 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter VIII. Freemasonry. Some appearances of phantasmagoria in the ninth century. The shade of Louis XVI. Grundler’s specters. Apparitions by Cagliostro, and anecdotes about him. — 174

[V1B-11 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter IX. My first experiments in phantasmagoria. The Abbé Chappe. I persuade him to make the telegraph known. The clumsy helper. My debut at the Pavillon de l’Échiquier. The effect of the glass harmonica. Indiscretion in the dark. Poultier’s article. A request for Louis XVI’s apparition. Specters under official seal. My departure for Bordeaux. Monsieur Cazalès attacks and is defeated. A Gascon epigram. I leave the ground. — 195

[V1B-12 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter X. Chance and the sciences. The discovery of galvanism in Italy. Errors about its nature. The first galvanometer. My conversion. Volta in my audience. A visit to Monsieur Charles. Priority in galvanic experiments in France. A session at the Institute. The triumph of Volta’s theory. — 227

[V1B-13 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter XI. The convent of the Capucines. The impression of the place. Delille’s description. Address before the apparitions. Principal apparitions. A young woman transformed into a specter. A husband’s shade. The credulity of the human mind. Varied scenes. An article by Mercier of the Institute. — 272

[V1B-14 | source PDF 469–469]
Chapter XII. Vain efforts to guess the method of phantasmagoria. The lawsuit with Aubée. Phantasmagorias spread everywhere. Details of the method. Wandering phantoms. — 311

[V1B-15 | source PDF 469–470]
Chapter XIII. Various apparatus for phantasmagoria. M. Lenoir. Anecdote of a living specter. Underground gallery. The dagger and the avenue of fir trees. The Bleeding Nun. Nostradamus and Marie de Médicis. A pretty woman emerging from a dressing case. Rain, hail and thunder. La d’Oliva in the groves of Versailles. — 332

[V1B-16 | source PDF 470–470]
Chapter XIV. Letter from Félix Nogaret. Galvanic Society. Condenser. Curious observations on electricity. Cardboard electricity. The physicist cat. Invention of gas, and the inventor’s death. Letter from Volta. — 363

[V1B-17 | source PDF 470–470]
Chapter XV. The Parisians’ love of novelty. The statue of Memnon. The Invisible Girl. Fitz-James the ventriloquist. Scene of the Committee of Public Safety. Magnetism. — 385

[V1B-18 | source PDF 470–470]
Chapter XVI. Extracts from the letters of M. Nahuys of Breda to his friend Robertson. — 414

[V1B-19 | source PDF 470–470]
Method for making the figure upright without a prism — 438

[V1B-20 | source PDF 470–470]
Continuation indicated in the note on page 137, and M. Robertson’s noctograph — 441

[V1B-21 | source PDF 470–470]
End of the Contents of the First Volume

[V1B-22 | source PDF 470–470]
Errata

[V1B-23 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 91, line 7: for “masculine”, read “muscadin”.

[V1B-24 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 106, line 19: for “Steinbotter”, read “Steibelt”.

[V1B-25 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 129, line 25: for “all this apparatus, represented by figure 4, moved forward toward Z or toward X”, read “all these mirrors tilted toward Z”.

[V1B-26 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 362, line 4: for “the miracles”, read “the prodigies”.

[V1B-27 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 363, line 1: for “Chapter XIII”, read “Chapter XIV”.

[V1B-28 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 376, line 12: for “my hygrometer”, read “my electrometer”.

[V1B-29 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 385, line 1: for “Chapter XIV”, read “Chapter XV”.

[V1B-30 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 402, line 4: for “l’engastrimyme”, read “l’engastrimysme”.

[V1B-31 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 403, line 18: for “l’Engastrimyme”, read “l’Engastrimysme”.

[V1B-32 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 414, line 1: for “Chapter XV”, read “Chapter XVI”.

[V1B-33 | source PDF 470–470]
Page 432, line 18: for “of the poluscope”, read “of the polyscope”.

[V1B-34 | source PDF 472–472]
New Complete Course of Nineteenth-Century Agriculture, by the members of the Institute’s agriculture section. Sixteen octavo volumes, illustrated with figures, totaling more than 8,800 pages. Price: 56 francs.

[Original illustration: v1-back-matter-rear-wrapper.png]
Original rear wrapper of Volume I. The publisher’s advertisement text is translated above and below.

[V1B-35 | source PDF 472–472]
6 francs per year. Review of Agriculture, Gardening, Rural and Domestic Economy, by Messrs. Noisette and Boitard.

Editorial record

Original page numbers are retained, not substituted with positions in the English edition. The noctograph entry says441, although its heading starts on442. The original table omits the Revolution of1830 item present in the ChapterII synopsis; it is therefore omitted here too.

All eleven printed errata are reproduced, and their corrections have been accounted for in the translated body. The two French technical-spelling corrections are retained in French because both are translated by the same English concept in context.

PDF471 is an unprinted verso with reversed show-through; its OCR noise is not author text. PDF472 is a publisher’s illustrated rear wrapper. Its balloon image and two advertisement texts are preserved separately from the author’s memoirs. The top and center ornaments of the contents page are also retained.

Volume II: Original Front Matter

[V2F-01 | source PDF 1–1]
Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs of the Physicist and Aeronaut E. G. Robertson, known for his phantasmagoria experiments and his balloon ascents in the principal cities of Europe; formerly a professor of physics. Illustrated with plates and figures. Second Volume. Paris: Roret’s Encyclopedic Bookshop, 10 bis, rue Hautefeuille.

[V2F-02 | source PDF 1–1]
Continuations of Buffon, in octavo format, by Messrs. F. Cuvier, Duméril, Lacordaire, Boisduval, de Saint-Fargeau, Walckenaer, Milne-Edwards, de Candolle, Brongniart, and others. 5 francs 50 centimes per volume of 500 to 700 pages. Each installment of ten plates: 3 francs in black and white, 6 francs in color.

[V2F-03 | source PDF 1–1]
18 francs per year. The Technologist, or Records of Progress in French and Foreign Industry, by M. Malepeyre.

[Original illustration: v2-front-pdf001.png]
Original front wrapper of Volume II, including its illustration, border, title and publisher’s advertisements.

[V2F-04 | source PDF 3–3]
Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs. Volume II.

[Original illustration: v2-front-pdf003.png]
Original half-title page.

[V2F-05 | source PDF 4–4]
Work printed by M. Rignoux.

[Original illustration: v2-front-pdf004.png]
Original printer’s notice.

[V2F-06 | source PDF 6–6]
Robertson’s experiments in physics in 1797. Designed by Robertson. Engraved by Lejeune.

[Original illustration: v2-frontispiece-byu.png]
Original frontispiece, Volume II, reproduced from the 1833 BYU copy because the lower caption is obscured in the 1840 Getty scan.

[V2F-07 | source PDF 7–7]
Recreational, Scientific, and Anecdotal Memoirs of the Physicist and Aeronaut E. G. Robertson, known for his phantasmagoria experiments and his balloon ascents in the principal cities of Europe; formerly a professor of physics. Illustrated with plates and figures. Second Volume. Paris: Roret’s Encyclopedic Bookshop, 10 bis, rue Hautefeuille. 1840.

[Original illustration: v2-front-pdf007.png]
Original 1840 title page.

[V2F-08 | source PDF 8–8]
Printing house of Pommeret and Guénot, 2, rue Mignon.

[Original illustration: v2-front-pdf008.png]
Original printing-house imprint.

Editorial record

The front matter is transcribed from the original printed pages, including both distinct printer imprints and the publisher’s advertisements on the wrapper. The advertisements are publishing matter, not Robertson’s narrative. The wrapper bears no year; the title page bears1840. Original margins, ornaments and signatures are preserved in the accompanying full-page images.

PDF2 and5 are unprinted versos with show-through, not additional author text. Handwritten ownership or collation marks are retained in the facsimiles but are not treated as printed author text. In the advertisement, the abbreviated range “5 à700 pages” is expanded to500–700 pages. The engraved Latin signature abbreviations inv. and sculp. are translated as “Designed by” and “Engraved by.”

The lower caption of the1840 Getty frontispiece is obscured at the bound edge. The same engraving and its complete caption, “Expériences Physiques de Robertson en1797,” were checked in the independent1833 BYU scan, Internet Archive item mmoiresrcratifss02robe, leaf8. That earlier impression supplies the displayed image and caption; the unaltered1840 master remains archived. No image content was reconstructed. Source: https://archive.org/details/mmoiresrcratifss02robe . Supplement record: source/supplements/byu-v2-frontispiece.json.

Volume II, Chapter I

Complete works and events. Revolutions in France, Belgium and Poland. M. Surlet de Chokier. Life at Plombières. Gambling and the secrets of a roulette table. Madame Bonaparte and the Capuchin’s Hole. General Ney and the balcony. A man cut in two. The hundred-and-ten-year-old man. The decline of my ghosts. Fitz-James’s desertion. Services rendered by balloons to the armies of the Sambre-and-Meuse and the Rhine. A Montgolfier balloon in Egypt. Bonaparte and the muftis. The Turkish ambassador to the Directory. Garnerin’s first parachute experiment.

[C17-01 | source PDF 9–10]
I no longer remember who it was who wrote that he would kill himself when he had finished a certain book, and did so. An author nowadays produces his complete works without undertaking to die on the last page: an unpardonable oversight, which makes the title inaccurate and almost always promises a second series of volumes, indispensable to anyone anxious not to leave a set of complete works incomplete. Time obliges the man who undertakes to write his memoirs, including observations on the history of contemporary political events, to commit the same offense against the public. Does he think he has reached the last link in the chain of events of a particular kind, and can write, for example, the word “End” beneath a History of the French Revolution? How mistaken he is! In vain was the division of Europe in 1815 placed under the protection of a Holy Alliance and consolidated by fifteen years of peace! The history of July 1830 shows us that, if it takes fifteen years for a revolution to ripen, three days are sometimes enough to bring it about. Old men have learned no longer to despair of their dreams for the future, even in the last days of their lives.

[C17-02 | source PDF 10–12]
What a succession of extraordinary events since the moment when I resolved to travel through Russia! In those days no one yet knew an Emperor Napoleon; there was only a Bonaparte, First Consul. Who would then have dared to dream of Moscow, Elba, Ghent, Saint Helena and Holyrood! I certainly do not intend to steal the words of the Contemporaine, who had the courage, so rare in her sex, to take her birth certificate as an epigraph. But I too saw the saturnalia of the Directory, the splendor and disasters of the Empire; I also saw the vicissitudes of the Spanish revolution. I confess I did not expect to witness a change of dynasty in France: only phantasmagoria offers more rapid disappearances. The interval needed to print two chapters of my first volume was enough for so great an upheaval. When I wrote a few lines in that volume about the former department of the Ourthe, quoting a remark by Grétry about his compatriots’ valor, who could have told me that my country was on the eve of regaining its independence, and that the people of Liège would so soon give fresh proofs of the courage for which the Dutch, or at least the constitutionalist editors of certain newspapers, have named them the lions of the North? Who could have told me that one of my childhood and school companions, M. Surlet de Chokier, would become president of the National Congress, then regent of all the provinces of Belgium? Who could have told me, too, that Poland, where the autocrat of the Russians had found such prompt obedience everywhere during my stay in Warsaw and Wilna, would rise in a single day to expel the emperor’s troops and the mighty autocrat’s brother? Surely at no other time has one man been permitted to see so many wonders accomplished; one can scarcely conceive that they could have occurred within a single lifetime. Yet such is the history made by the men of the nineteenth century.

[C17-03 | source PDF 12–12]
My narrative stopped at the beginning of this new century. At that time, Russian customs presented at every turn some of those peculiarities observable among peoples who have not entirely cast off the covering of their original barbarism. Peter the Great had, so to speak, decreed civilization in his dominions; but it necessarily stopped at the heart and did not penetrate very far into the other parts of the social body, where only time and contact with highly civilized peoples can introduce it. Thus the stay of the Russian armies in our capital must have contributed greatly to the progress of general ideas among the Muscovite nation; and it is impossible that Parisian civilization, carried into every class of the empire by a hundred thousand Russians who had experienced all its advantages, should not have produced very marked effects.

[C17-04 | source PDF 12–13]
I must acknowledge that, although the ancient Scythian people show themselves somewhat slow to learn, the nobles, on the contrary, seem imbued with the ideas of the founder of Saint Petersburg. By every means in their power, and especially by the most kindly welcome to all foreigners of merit, they seek to hasten the development of the sciences and arts possessed by other nations. Thus, among the reasons that determined my departure for Russia, I must give considerable weight to the urgings of M. de Marcoff, His Imperial Majesty’s ambassador to France, and the exhortations of the chamberlain M. Démidoff.

[C17-05 | source PDF 13–13]
I had already half decided to risk this long journey when rheumatism throughout my body, the result of excessive work pursued with too little care for myself, came to bind all my limbs. Far from being able to give life to shadows, I was in great need of someone to restore my health and even the simple power of movement: I was entirely deprived of it, to the point of being unable even to move an arm. My convalescence was long. I was prescribed the waters at Plombières, and I resolved to go and take them all the more readily because a particular circumstance made my absence possible.

[C17-06 | source PDF 13–14]
My elder brother, who held a canonry at Liège, had tried to defend the rights of his office with too much violence during a revolutionary disturbance. Forced to flee, he took refuge with me and agreed to carry on my work and stand in for me while I went away to recover my health.

[C17-07 | source PDF 14–18]
I shall not describe how the days were spent at Plombières then. People tried, as they do today, to drive illness away with pleasure; they often made excursions in carriages and wagons, pooling their money for picnics in the surrounding countryside. In the evening, on returning from these outings or the usual walk, they danced and gambled... above all, they gambled. This last pastime was very far from being one for me: my only role then was that of spectator, which would sometimes have been as entertaining as any, if pity or disgust could have left room for mockery. What a frenzy gambling is, and to what lengths it is carried! There are people who have twenty chances against them and still play, who would face a thousand and still defy them rather than refrain from playing, rather than leave unsatisfied a fury constantly increased by the desire for revenge and the prospect of despair. What has not been done, for example, to turn people against roulette? I remember reading with keen interest a little pamphlet by M. Lefebvre, awarded a prize by the Institute, in which that ingenious writer demonstrated by exact calculations that the player has thousands of chances against him. I regret that he did not know a fact which might have furnished him with an anecdote to support his argument. Who would believe that, in the United States of America, the treachery of roulette itself is not enough to satisfy the greed of those who keep the bank! Here is a little-known device whose secret they possess, and which would certainly disabuse a host of unfortunate victims if it were revealed to them. The gaming table shown in the facing plate contains a mechanism that makes the ball enter the even or odd compartments at the banker’s will. Imagine a large wheel concealed inside the tabletop EEG, immediately beneath the compartments DD arranged in a circle, which can impart an imperceptible movement to the right or left to all the little vanes D separating the compartments. The ball starts from point G: where will it stop, and in which compartment? Look at the cloth to see where the large piles lie, on even or on odd. It makes no difference: the banker has chance in his kneecap. Is even laden with gold? The slightest movement beneath the table will narrow all the even compartments by a quarter of a line, and the ball will have no choice but to enter where the doors have not been closed. After that, go ahead and prick your tally cards and count the blacks and reds: you will see what fate can do against a nudge of the knee. As for me, I repeat, the hazards of the green cloth have never tempted me. But I found other diversions at Plombières; it was already a pleasant enough one to hear, here and there, accounts of the adventures of the various visitors taking the waters.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-roulette-airship-plate.png]
Original paired plate: airship and roulette table. Volume II, plate marked p.7. The original lettering and arrangement are preserved.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-roulette-detail.png]
Roulette table, enlarged and rotated from the preceding plate. Passe: high numbers; Manque: low numbers; Pair: even; Impair: odd.

[C17-08 | source PDF 18–19]
Among the notable people at the waters, Madame Bonaparte, the First Consul’s wife, particularly attracted attention. Something I observed locally made me suspect a peculiar motive for her journey. It is so childish, in truth, that I should not venture this conjecture if it were not known that the excellent but credulous Joséphine sometimes trusted Mademoiselle Lenormand’s prophecies. There was a very famous spot at Plombières called the Capuchin’s Hole, and this hole, like many others in France, worked wonders. As everyone knows, in the temples of the ancients the priestess’s tripod was placed above cavities from which rose the sacred vapors that tormented the priestess and brought forth oracles. The hole at Plombières did much better: it brought forth children, and women, it was said, found assured fertility there. When I was there, the keeper of this little abyss of creation was named Jean. Jean did not have a Capuchin’s beard and was not called Brother Jean; but his tall stature, regular features and a certain muscular strength recommended him to the attention of the female faithful. It would not even be surprising if, when it was a matter of exorcising the troublesome barrenness of some pretty Lucretia of humble station, Jean did much to enhance the place’s reputation. Has not the river Ganges, for the same purpose, become a man more than once?

[C17-09 | source PDF 19–20]
General Ney, Madame Bonaparte’s equerry, had accompanied her to Plombières. An accident very nearly ended, even then, the illustrious career of this warrior, whom a premature death would at least have spared a most deplorable end. One day he wished to show himself on the balcony of his hotel. The masonry, which had doubtless not been built to support so much glory, partly collapsed. Fortunately the general caught hold of what remained most solid and was left hanging; people came to his aid and rescued him from this dangerous and no less bizarre position. A much sadder accident occurred a few days later. All kinds of iron utensils are made at Plombières, as well as a great deal of iron wire, by means of large wheels driven by a torrent. On one side of the drawing die, a powerful pair of tongs continually pulls hard on the wire, which is fed in from the other by a man who has great coils of it wound around him. One of these unfortunate workmen failed to free himself quickly enough from the wire surrounding him, and his body was cut in two, leaving two separate halves. I cannot think without shuddering of this horrible manner of death.

[C17-10 | source PDF 20–21]
Besides the effects certainly produced by the use of mineral waters, I had the habit of fresh air and long daily walks to help me recover quickly. On one of these excursions I met an old man of a hundred and ten, with a state of health that a young old man of eighty might have envied. Active and a good walker, he regularly covered his four leagues every day. Like many people one meets in the different countries of the world, I am attached to life, and I rather enjoy being with people who have made such long use of it: it seems to me that they must know something of the secret of prolonging it. I shall have occasion to return to this subject elsewhere; I shall therefore merely say that I sought opportunities to see and talk with this centenarian. He often spoke to me of a deluge that had once flooded Plombières: the water had risen above the roofs of the houses. I did not doubt the truth of his account, since the village stands in a gorge, with all its houses at the foot of the mountains, and is often at risk of another such flood.

[C17-11 | source PDF 21–22]
I left Plombières fully recovered and hurried back to Paris, not forgetting, as I passed through Bar-sur-Seine, to drink sparkling Champagne at its very source and take away a few jars of preserved currants, obligatory purchases for anyone passing through that town in Champagne. If my brother found me in good health again, I found my show, on the contrary, very ill. The only returning souls were on the stage, for the auditorium was deserted. Anyone but my brother I should have accused of Jesuitical scheming and hostility toward my poor shadows in the interest of the superstitions and dogmas that his profession made so many laws for him; but on his part there was only a lack of practice and skill. I had to make fresh efforts to bring the public back, and I succeeded; yet this first desertion left me somewhat disheartened. I saw that, to keep my room constantly full, I should have to resort continually to novelties; whereas in a country such as Russia, where I supposed, rightly, that the sciences were not very far advanced, galvanism, phantasmagoria and balloons would exert all their magic and fascination. Besides, I was eager to be among the first to make the fine discoveries of physics and chemistry known in those lands where my name was already known and where I was certain of a good reception. My taste for travel and new countries urged me on no less strongly. One final reason decided me: Fitz-James’s departure for England.

[C17-12 | source PDF 22–24]
Although all Paris had already enjoyed this ventriloquist’s illusions, the play of his belly voice was so entertaining that it constantly drew people. After hearing him, one was curious to hear him again; no foreign visitor entered the capital without paying him several visits. The son of Volanges, an actor then very fashionable for his perfect naturalness in the Jeannot roles, conceived the idea of profiting from Fitz-James’s talent and taking him to London. Fitz-James made no pretensions to gratitude: he resorted to trickery to free himself from the engagement that bound him to me for several years. Volanges had advised him to work at provoking me into some great fit of anger that might lead me to tear up our contract. I fell into the trap: he immediately abandoned me and entered into an engagement with his new protector. But he had none of the qualities needed to make a fortune, or even to maintain regular business relations with a partner. He needed someone who knew how to earn money for him, though by his means; and he had always been a stranger to the art of keeping it. To how many annoyances and vexations his misconduct had exposed me! Always pressed for money and always quick to dispose of it, a hundred times he tried to make me capitulate at the very moment of appearing before the public. As soon as I gave the order to raise the curtain, I was certain to hear this short, maddening declaration: “I will not perform.” “Very well,” I would reply, “if that is your intention, I shall tell the audience.” He would let me take a few steps, then rush onto the stage; and then, with all kinds of risky remarks and bawdy sallies, cause me fresh torments. His partnership with Volanges was very short-lived; he appeared only twice in London. Money divided the two partners. Fitz-James returned to France by way of Holland in such a state of destitution that the French people in Amsterdam took up a collection to pay his passage. For the rest, I have never since had cause to complain of the way Fitz-James spoke of me: it was always in proper terms.

[C17-13 | source PDF 24–25]
A few days before his departure, I accepted an invitation from M. de Marcoff, the Russian ambassador. I met him frequently, and he had invited me to breakfast several times. I accepted; and his renewed urgings finally determined me to leave for Saint Petersburg. He assured me that no aerostatic experiment had yet taken place in that city, Empress Catherine, jealous of every kind of glory that did not belong to her, having never granted permission for the experiment owed to Montgolfier’s genius to be carried out in her dominions. An ascent must therefore excite the Russians’ astonishment and admiration. Indeed, the first time an assembly witnesses this spectacle, it fills the soul with strong emotion and gives grandeur and elevation to the thoughts; its majesty strikes even those most familiar with it.

[C17-14 | source PDF 25–25]
For anyone who travels with the aim of making a fortune, ballooning is one of the most powerful means of doing so, provided one also has resources of another kind with which to occupy the intervals between aerial journeys profitably. An ascent can be seen by the largest population and can bring in enormous receipts at a single stroke;[C17-N1] but one must know how to choose the place, time and occasion. I hope aeronauts will find some useful guidance and examples on this subject in this work.

[C17-15 | source PDF 25–26]
It was precisely then, in 1802, that I had just bought the Fleurus balloon, which Bonaparte had ordered sold on his return from Egypt. The book I am writing, without being exactly a complete history of ballooning, must nevertheless contain its most important episodes; I cannot omit an account of the services the aerial machine rendered to the armies of the Sambre-and-Meuse and the Rhine. M. Coutelle, commander of the corps established under the name of balloonists, has been able to describe this moment of glory for balloons more accurately than anyone else, and I shall use his own words:

[C17-16 | source PDF 26–26]
“The Committee of Public Safety had gathered around it a commission of scientists, including Monge, Berthollet, Guyton de Morveau, Fourcroy, Carnot and others. Guyton proposed using the balloon in the armies as a means of observation. The government accepted this proposal on condition that sulfuric acid should not be used, since sulfur was needed to manufacture gunpowder. The commission then decided to use the decomposition of water.

[C17-17 | source PDF 26–26]
“This experiment, performed by the celebrated Lavoisier and repeated in our laboratories, had yielded only small quantities. An experiment on a large scale was necessary: we needed to be able to extract twelve to fifteen thousand cubic feet of gas in the shortest possible time.

[C17-18 | source PDF 26–27]
“The experiment[C17-N2] succeeded: I obtained five to six hundred cubic feet of gas. The members of the commission who had witnessed the operation were so satisfied that the very next day I received orders to travel posthaste to Maubeuge and propose to General Jourdan the use of a balloon with his army.

[C17-19 | source PDF 27–27]
“I arrived at Beaumont covered in mud, for I had been obliged to ride the six leagues on horseback over roads so bad that the artillery wagons were in mud above their wheel hubs. The representative to whom I was to present my orders at first understood neither my mission nor the Committee of Public Safety’s order, still less a balloon in the middle of a camp. Before hearing me out, he threatened to have me shot as a suspect. At last, however, he softened and complimented me on my devotion.

[C17-20 | source PDF 27–27]
“The army was at Beaumont, six leagues beyond Maubeuge; the enemy, less than a league away, could attack at any moment. The general made this observation to me and asked me to convey it to the Committee. I reached Paris after spending two and a half days and two nights on this expedition.

[C17-21 | source PDF 27–28]
“The commission then felt the need to carry out the entire experiment with a balloon capable of lifting two people, and the minister placed the garden and small château at Meudon at my disposal.

[C17-22 | source PDF 28–28]
“A furnace had to be invented, in which I thought it necessary to place seven pipes; apparatus and vats transportable with the armies had to be devised, along with a host of necessary things that experience, as much as theory, would have to indicate.

[C17-23 | source PDF 28–28]
“I proposed to the members of the commission that Conté, whom I had introduced to them at my first experiment, should be associated with me. Conté agreed to come and settle with me at Meudon, provided that I alone should bear all responsibility, handle the correspondence with the commission and keep the accounts.

[C17-24 | source PDF 28–28]
“After several months’ work, with the furnace built, partly by our own hands, the pipes in place and all the apparatus arranged, the balloon was filled. I informed the commission; several of its members came to preside over the first trial of an ascent by a balloon held by two ropes.

[C17-25 | source PDF 28–31]
“The commissioners invited me to take my place in the basket and gave me a series of signals to repeat and observations to make. I had myself raised by stages to the full length of the ropes, two hundred and seventy toises. I was then about three hundred and fifty toises above the level of the Seine; with a telescope I could distinguish perfectly the river’s seven bends as far as Meulan. Called back to earth, I received compliments from the members of the commission, from whom I did not conceal the impression likely to be felt by someone finding himself, for the first time, thus isolated at a greater or lesser distance from the ground. I impressed on them the necessity of always having two people: that is, one person to accompany whoever was directing all the operations.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-military-balloon-plate.png]
Military ballooning. Figure 1: observation and signals; figure 2: transport; figure 3: securing the balloon on the ground. Original plate marked Volume II, p.19; rotated for reading. Original title: Mémoires de Robertson (Memoirs of Robertson).

[C17-26 | source PDF 31–32]
“Several engravings have wrongly shown more than two ropes[C17-N3] holding the balloon. Since it was constantly swaying, a third rope would have been now too long, now too short, according to the movement imparted to the balloon, and consequently useless. A rope for transmitting messages would only have been an encumbrance. In my basket I had little bags filled with sand and bearing a streamer. I put the note or letter I wished to send inside one, then threw the bag down (fig. 1, B), after giving warning by an agreed signal. It fell beneath the basket.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-bridle.png]
Crow’s-foot bridle A, illustrating original note 3. Volume II, p.19.

[C17-27 | source PDF 32–32]
“A few days later, the governing committee sent me my commission as captain commanding the balloonists in the artillery arm, attached to the general staff.

[C17-28 | source PDF 32–32]
“At the same time I received orders to organize a company of thirty men, including the captain, a lieutenant, a second lieutenant, a sergeant-major acting as paymaster and noncommissioned officers, and to proceed to Maubeuge with the least possible delay.

[C17-29 | source PDF 32–32]
“On the eighth day I set out with an officer, having already sent toward Maubeuge the small number of soldiers I had been able to assemble.

[C17-30 | source PDF 32–33]
“On reaching Maubeuge, my first concern was to find a site, build my furnace, lay in fuel and prepare everything while awaiting the arrival of the balloon and apparatus used in my first experiment at Meudon.

[C17-31 | source PDF 33–33]
“The different corps of the army did not know how to regard soldiers who were not yet on the military establishment and whose service was unknown to them. The general commanding at Maubeuge ordered a sortie against the Austrians, entrenched within cannon range of the fortress. I asked to be employed with my little troop in this attack. Two of my men were seriously wounded; the second lieutenant received a spent ball in the chest. We returned to the fortress with our place among the soldiers of the army.

[C17-32 | source PDF 33–33]
“A few days later, my equipment having arrived, I was able to light my furnace, and the balloon was filled in less than fifty hours. Thereafter, twice and often three times a day, I went up on the commanding general’s orders with a staff officer to examine the enemy’s works, positions and strength.[C17-N4]

[C17-33 | source PDF 34–34]
“Each day we found appreciable differences, either in the works the enemy had carried out during the night or in his visible forces. On the fifth day, a seventeen-pounder concealed in a ravine at half cannon range fired at the balloon as soon as it appeared above the ramparts. The shot passed over it. A second round was soon prepared; I could see the gun being loaded and fired. This time the ball passed so close that I thought the balloon had been pierced. On the third shot, the ball passed beneath it. All crossed the town and fell in the middle of the entrenched camp. (I had with me a balloonist who had long served as an observer in the tower and whom I had enlisted in my company.) Once I had given the signal to bring us down, my troop worked so energetically to get me to the ground that the gun was able to fire only twice. The next morning the gun was no longer in position.

[C17-34 | source PDF 35–35]
“For twenty days I had been occupied with continual work, by night and day, as well as observations. Nothing had been arranged for taking the field, for moving a spread sail of twenty-seven feet and so fragile a globe, for leaving a fortress, crossing ditches and passing over ramparts and gates, when at noon I received orders to move the next day toward Charleroi, twelve leagues away by the detours I should be obliged to take to avoid villages whose streets were too narrow.

[C17-35 | source PDF 35–35]
“Experience had taught me how much strength and skill I needed to resist the wind or guard against its unexpected blows. I spent the night arranging twenty ropes around the equator of the net, securing them with closely spaced fastenings (fig. 2) and sliding loops. Each balloonist was to carry his rope, fasten it and detach it at the first signal; the basket was suspended and detached in the same way. At daybreak we were able to leave the fortress and pass quite close to the enemy’s mounted sentries.

[C17-36 | source PDF 35–36]
“I traveled with the balloon at such a height that cavalry and military wagons could pass beneath the basket; the balloonists holding the ropes walked along both sides of the road.

[C17-37 | source PDF 36–36]
“The basket carried the two ascent ropes, a large canvas sheet[C17-N5] for bringing the balloon down when the wind was too strong, stakes, mallets and pickaxes, together with the bags and signals. The balloon could lift five hundred pounds;[C17-N6] but the slightest excess lift was enough to rise in calm weather. I therefore carried sandbags of ten and twenty pounds in my basket, reducing their number according to the strength of the wind, or emptying them if gusts took me by surprise. At Maubeuge, an unexpected gust was carrying me onto the tip of a steeple; a twenty-pound bag that I abruptly threw out made me rise again.

[C17-38 | source PDF 36–37]
“After making a reconnaissance on the way, we reached the approaches to Charleroi at sunset. Before the end of the day I had time to reconnoiter the fortress with a general officer. The next day I made a second reconnaissance on the plain of Jumet; and on the following day the balloon remained on observation duty, with a general officer and myself aboard, for seven to eight hours.

[C17-39 | source PDF 37–37]
“At three in the afternoon, the attack having begun at half past three in the morning, General Jourdan ordered me to ascend and observe a point about which he had a written note given to me. While I was observing with an officer of my company, the general having no staff officer available, a battalion being moved to another point by the shortest route passed beneath my ropes. I heard several voices repeating angrily that they were being made to retreat. I distinctly heard one of them say to the others, ‘If we were retreating, the balloon would not be there.’

[C17-40 | source PDF 37–37]
“Several Austrian officers who were at the battle of Fleurus assured me, when they were in France, that several carbine shots had been fired at us. After a few further reconnaissances, we followed the movements of the army.

[C17-41 | source PDF 37–37]
“We were near the heights of Namur when a gust of wind that we could not have foreseen drove the balloon against a tree, which split its upper part. In an instant it was empty.

[C17-42 | source PDF 38–38]
“I did not hesitate to return to Maubeuge, twelve leagues away; we reached it the next morning. A new balloon I had requested had not arrived. I thought it my duty to travel by post to hasten its dispatch. As soon as I received it, I made every arrangement to fill it.

[C17-43 | source PDF 38–38]
“After several reconnaissances with the general officers commanding different army corps, we crossed the Meuse by boat, heading for Brussels. A fresh incident awaited us at the gate of that great city.

[C17-44 | source PDF 38–38]
“A gust of wind drove the balloon onto a splinter of wood, which cut its lower part; a small quantity of gas escaped. I entered the park, where I marked out a large enclosure with a simple string, which the multitude of curious onlookers of every class respected. The damage was soon repaired, and on the fourth day I rejoined the army.

[C17-45 | source PDF 38–39]
“On reaching Borcette, near Aix-la-Chapelle, a stay of several months allowed me to set up a new installation there. I had scarcely finished it when I received orders to go to Paris to form a second company. I was charged with taking it to the Army of the Rhine, where the reconnaissances met with the same success.

[C17-46 | source PDF 39–39]
“The Austrian generals and the officers of their army never ceased to admire this way of observing them, which they called as scientific as it was daring. Whenever I met them, I received the most flattering expressions of their regard. ‘Only the French are capable of conceiving and carrying out such an enterprise,’ they repeatedly told me when I said they could do as much themselves.

[C17-47 | source PDF 39–40]
“I received orders to reconnoiter Mainz. I took up a position between our lines and the fortress, at half cannon range. The wind was strong; to offer it greater resistance, I went up alone with more than two hundred pounds of excess lift. I was more than a hundred and fifty toises up when three successive squalls drove me down to the ground with such force that several of the bars supporting the basket floor broke. Each time the balloon rose again so rapidly that sixty-four people, thirty-two on each rope, were dragged a great distance. Had the ropes been secured to grapnels, as had been proposed to me, there is no doubt that they would have snapped or the net would have torn.

[C17-48 | source PDF 40–40]
“The enemy did not fire. Five generals came out of the fortress, raising white handkerchiefs on their hats; our generals, whom I informed, went to meet them. When they met, the general commanding the fortress said to the French general, ‘General, I beg you as a favor to have that brave officer brought down. The wind will kill him; he must not fall victim to an accident unconnected with war. It was I who had him fired on at Maubeuge.’

[C17-49 | source PDF 40–40]
“The wind abated a little. I could then count with the naked eye the guns on the ramparts, as well as all the people walking in the streets and squares.

[C17-50 | source PDF 40–41]
“In general, the enemy soldiers, who could all see an observer looking down on them and taking notes, were convinced that they could not make a movement without being noticed. Our own soldiers were of the same opinion and found in the observers a new kind of bravery that excited their admiration and confidence. On our marches, always arduous, the constant vigilance required allowed no balloonist to leave the rope holding the balloon. We sometimes found refreshments prepared for us along our route; soldiers of the light troops also often brought us wine.

[C17-51 | source PDF 41–41]
“We were camped on the banks of the Rhine, before Mannheim, when our commanding general sent me across to the other bank as an envoy under a flag of truce. As soon as the Austrian officers learned that I commanded the balloon, I was overwhelmed with questions and compliments. An officer who had crossed the river with me remarked that if my ropes broke, I might be in danger on falling into the enemy camp. ‘Mr. Aerial Engineer,’ replied a senior officer, ‘the Austrians know how to honor talent and bravery; you would be treated with distinction. It was I who first spotted you during the battle of Fleurus and pointed you out to Prince Coburg, whose aide-de-camp I am.’

[C17-52 | source PDF 41–41]
“I remarked to him that they need not, as was customary, forbid me entry to the fortress, since by ascending on the other bank I could look down into the town.

[C17-53 | source PDF 41–41]
“The next day the general commanding there sent permission for me to be shown the fortress, if our general agreed to let me enter.

[C17-54 | source PDF 42–42]
“Although the swaying one experiences, greater or less according to the force of the wind, is often a hindrance when one must use a telescope—I had grown accustomed to using one except in very high winds—I must point out that most often the different movements of the infantry, cavalry and artillery formations and their parks can be distinguished with the naked eye. At Maubeuge, before Mainz and Mannheim, I could count the guns in the redoubts and on the ramparts without a glass.

[C17-55 | source PDF 42–42]
“What produces an impression to which one must grow accustomed is the noise the balloon makes when compressed by repeated gusts of wind. A hollow forms in it, greater or smaller according to the force of the wind. Once the gust has passed, the balloon resumes its shape through the elasticity of the compressed gas, with such speed that the noise, or whipcrack, of the taffeta can be heard a great distance away. One would fear its tearing if it were not held by the net. This accident, however, has never happened to me, although I have often used a balloon whose taffeta had lost almost all its strength.

[C17-56 | source PDF 42–43]
“While I was at a height of a hundred and fifty toises on a reconnaissance on the banks of the Rhine, a dreadful chill forced me, for the first time, to sit down in my basket. It was followed by a violent fever that brought me to the brink of the grave at Frankenthal, where I had set up an installation. My lieutenant took command of my company and crossed the Rhine. On the very first night his balloon was riddled with buckshot and put out of service.

[C17-57 | source PDF 43–43]
“The balloon operated by Captain L’Homond, commanding the first company, which several shells and cannonballs had failed to disable before Erhenbreistein, was likewise pierced by several bullets near Frankfurt. This company was taken prisoner at Würzburg in Franconia and subsequently formed part of the expedition to Egypt.

[C17-58 | source PDF 43–43]
“Obliged to take leave, I was scarcely convalescent when I returned to Paris. On arrival I was promoted to the rank of battalion commander and resumed my work at Meudon.[C17-N7]”

[C17-59 | source PDF 44–44]
This account, which a French reader cannot fail to find interesting, contains all the balloons’ claims to military glory. The role they played in the expedition to Egypt was in no way warlike. The English captured the transport carrying the apparatus and the supplies of acid needed to produce the gas, so that we do not know whether Bonaparte would have used them. At least he did not neglect to bring the marvelous spectacle of aerostatic experiments to the peoples on the banks of the Nile, whom astonishment was to subdue to him no less than terror. Although I have read accounts of the expedition to Egypt that record no aerial ascent, M. L’Homond assured me that a tricolor paper Montgolfier balloon, forty-five feet in diameter, had risen majestically amid the splendid festivities held in Cairo for 9 Vendémiaire. The unfamiliar style of the Egyptian costumes, mingled with our military uniforms, must have added still further to the picturesque effect of a balloon’s departure in the midst of a great multitude.

[C17-60 | source PDF 44–45]
The conversation Bonaparte had with several of the most learned muftis in the Great Pyramid of Cheops on 25 Thermidor, Year VI, shows how skillfully he used the superiority of our knowledge and the secrets of our discoveries to influence their minds.

[C17-61 | source PDF 45–45]
MUHAMED. “Noble successor of Scander (Alexander), honor to your invincible arms and to the unexpected thunderbolt that issues from among your mounted warriors.[C17-N8]”

[C17-62 | source PDF 45–45]
BONAPARTE. “Do you believe that this thunderbolt is a work of the children of men? Do you believe it? Allah has had it placed in my hands by the genius of war.”

[C17-63 | source PDF 45–45]
IBRAHIM. “We recognize by your arms that it is Allah who sends you. Would you be victorious if Allah had not permitted it? The Delta and all the neighboring lands resound with your miracles.”

[C17-64 | source PDF 45–45]
BONAPARTE. “A heavenly chariot will rise at my command to the dwelling place of the clouds; and lightning will descend to earth along a metal wire as soon as I command it.”

[C17-65 | source PDF 45–46]
But Bonaparte did not intend to treat the enlightened peoples of Europe like the ignorant men of Africa. He knew that balloons should not become ordinary weapons of war; that the surprise of a first trial had made it possible to derive some advantage from them, but that, since their use could become common to all nations, they would be one more encumbrance for everyone, without any special advantage for the French armies. One may also suppose that he was jealous enough of the superiority of his military genius to want nothing phantasmagorical in his successes. On returning from Egypt, he ordered all the apparatus and equipment at Meudon sold, and thus I became the purchaser of the Fleurus balloon.

[C17-66 | source PDF 46–47]
I had long cherished the desire to rise into the air and explore, as an artist and physicist, this new branch of the science that occupied my whole life. The reader has seen how my hope was disappointed at Bordeaux. Some time afterward, and three years before the Meudon sale, I gladly undertook to send up a balloon of an original shape at a fête given for the Turkish ambassador in the Tivoli gardens. M. Gérard Dérivière, of the Constituent Assembly, was then director of that establishment, and the fête, or rather the ambassador, was so successful that the receipts amounted to no less than thirty thousand francs. Turks, Chinese, Persians, Osages or Bedouins will always be welcome in Paris, provided they appear there only at long intervals and for a short time. Who, indeed, thinks about the Egyptians now that some twenty of them live among us? They cross the city from end to end in their most splendid costume without anyone paying more attention to their velvet jackets than to the embroidery of our marshals of France. The giraffe, the woman supposedly a hundred and fifteen years old, M. Kessel’s whale, all had their turn in favor and have been forgotten. Parisian curiosity, so lively and so avid, exhausts itself on an object in an instant and demands a new one each day. Thus, for a long time, a favorite saying of mine was that if the sun, which we admire because it is far away, were on earth, we should look at it on the first day, but by the next no one would deign to pay it any attention.

[C17-67 | source PDF 47–48]
Though republicans then, the inhabitants of the capital rushed no less eagerly after Esseid-Aly-Effendi than they did a few years ago after the Persian ambassador. This shows how much our character is our own, and how powerless the form of government is to alter it: beneath a Roman toga or a Turkish pelisse, we should still be French. Esseid-Aly was, moreover, handsome, young and well proportioned, full of courtesy, though affecting a great gravity which the women forgave him on account of his other qualities and the cashmere shawls in which he wrapped himself. His reception by the Directory took place on 10 Thermidor, Year V (1797). The ceremonial was discussed: it was decided that he should make three bows and the Directors should keep their hats on. A grand diplomatic banquet concluded the ceremony.

[C17-68 | source PDF 48–49]
The fête I have mentioned took place at Tivoli on July 2. I had called on Esseid-Aly the day before to ask him to write his name. He obligingly did so, tracing it on a sheet of paper in letters two inches high.

[C17-69 | source PDF 49–49]
He had coffee and preserves offered to me and promised to attend this “show”—the interpreter’s very word, for he probably could not find the equivalent of the expression that conveyed the ambassador’s thought. I had his name painted in large characters on a balloon fifteen feet in diameter, shaped like a crescent, as shown in the facing illustration, fig. 1. This experiment greatly pleased the ambassador and was very well received by the public.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-crescent.png]
Figure 1. Crescent balloon for the Turkish ambassador. Robertson identifies the original inscription as the ambassador’s name, Esseid-Aly. Volume II, p.36.

[C17-70 | source PDF 49–49]
Jacques Garnerin, who had just begun his career as a balloonist by sending up an elegant doll beneath a varnished-paper balloon, attempted a parachute experiment on the following August 24 in the garden of the Hôtel Biron. The ambassador was invited to attend, but the experiment did not succeed, and Esseid-Aly said as he left that he had predicted it perfectly well: man was not made to fly; Muhammad did not wish it.

[Original illustration: chapter-seventeen-tailpiece.png]


Original notes

[C17-N1 | source PDF 25–25]
It will be seen that, in several cities where this spectacle had never previously taken place, some of my receipts exceeded 25,000 francs.

[C17-N2 | source PDF 26–26]
M. Charles, a friend of M. Coutelle, was present at this experiment. For the process of decomposing water, see my last volume, in which I have brought together all the details that make up the science of ballooning.

[C17-N3 | source PDF 31–31]
These two ropes were 270 toises long, although it was rarely necessary to rise so high, and weighed 120 pounds. They ended in crow’s-foot bridles attached to the equator of the net (fig. 1, A). The meshes of these bridles slid through very strong wooden rings, so that the strain was evenly distributed throughout.

[C17-N4 | source PDF 33–34]
The balloonists’ maneuvers were performed in silence, and communication with their commanders took place by means of signals attached to the basket’s railing. These signals, made of white, red or yellow fabric, were about 18 inches wide, square or triangular, and formed various bands (fig. 1, C). The different signals indicated to the handlers the maneuvers for advancing, descending or moving left or right. If, for example, a descent was to be ordered, signals spread on the ground (fig. 1, bb) notified the observers. Small sandbags topped with a strip of cloth were used to attach a note that had to be sent from the balloon to the commander-in-chief. I have these details from M. Coutelle.

[C17-N5 | source PDF 36–36]
This canvas also served to hold the balloon on the ground during the night (fig. 3).

[C17-N6 | source PDF 36–36]
Including the basket, which weighed 38 pounds. The balloon’s diameter was 25 feet.

[C17-N7 | source PDF 43–43]
Besides the places mentioned in this account, balloons were also used at Andernach, where Bernadotte refused to ascend to a great height, saying bluntly that he preferred the donkeys’ road; at Bonne, at the Chartreuse of Liège, at Coq-Rouge, at the siege of Coblentz, at Kiel, at Strasbourg, and at Fleurus, where General Morlot went up.

[C17-N8 | source PDF 45–45]
The horse artillery, which greatly astonished the Mamelukes.

Editorial record

The chapter numbering restarts with I in VolumeII; stable passage IDs continue with C17 to remain unique across the edition. The synopsis prints Suriet, while the narrative gives Surlet de Chokier; the English uses the narrative form consistently.

Historical judgments about national character, civilization, gender and religious belief remain the author’s. “The Contemporaine” is retained as his reference rather than silently replacing it with an identification not given in this passage.

The roulette account preserves the source’s claimed mechanism, letters EEG/DD/D/G and quarter-line displacement. “Prick your tally cards” renders piquer des cartes in the context of recording gambling results. This is the author’s historical account, not a modern assessment of its mechanics or probability.

The return from Plombières plays on revenants, meaning both ghosts and people who return. “Returning souls” preserves the double sense. The ages110 and80 and distance four leagues are retained as printed.

Coutelle’s entire first-person account is retained, with eight original chapter notes. “Excess lift” renders excès de légèreté; the units remain the historical French feet, inches, pounds and toises, without silent conversion. A flamme on the message bags is a streamer, not a flame. The source says a seventeen-pounder, twenty-seven feet for the spread sail, and twenty-five feet for the balloon diameter; these figures are preserved.

The printed geographical form Erhenbreistein is retained rather than silently changing the account. Mainz, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Würzburg render Mayence, Manheim, Francfort and Wurtzbourg. The original note’s Bonne, Coq-Rouge and Kiel are retained. These passages report historical claims rather than independently verified events.

The account of Bonaparte and the muftis is translated as presented, not authenticated as a transcript. The Republican dates25 Thermidor YearVI,10 Thermidor YearV and9 Vendémiaire, the July2 fête, August24 experiment and1802 balloon purchase are retained. The source’s “three years before” does not reconcile with all these dates; no chronology has been silently corrected.

The chapter has37 consecutive numbered text pages. PDF15 and29 are blank versos; PDF16 and30 are inserted plates. Figure1 is reused for the military balloon plate and later for the crescent balloon. The drawings retain their original labels. The crescent’s inscription is identified by Robertson as the ambassador’s name, Esseid-Aly; its calligraphy is preserved in the scan rather than reconstructed.

The original note directs the reader to “my last volume” for the complete science of ballooning. That promise is retained as printed, without treating it as proof that the present two-volume source contains a separate technical volume.

Volume II, Chapter II

Journeys from Paris to Saint Petersburg, thirty years apart. Gold beneath one’s feet. The red coats. The merchant barber. Hamburg’s prosperity. General Moreau in exile. Everything for money. Garnerin and Counselor d’Hermbstaedt. Letters from the professor. The Hamburg Senate’s strange fears. A stormy debut. The splendid ascent of July 18.

[C18-01 | source PDF 50–52]
The journey from Paris to Saint Petersburg was neither as swift nor as cheap in 1802 as it is in 1831. Today one need only pay four or five hundred francs, according to one’s seat, at the office of the Messageries générales to reach one’s destination in ten days, comfortably conveyed and pleasantly fed along the way. At the time of which I speak, about fifteen years before the adventurous expedition that hurled four hundred thousand men, French or allied, onto the roads of the Russian Empire and made us know them all too well, such a long and difficult journey was considered an undertaking of some importance.[C18-N1] It required determination and money. Artists, whose excess of the first quality could not compensate for the all too common absence of the second, therefore dared in very small numbers to risk so distant a migration at their own expense. The Muscovite government, which since Peter the Great had never ceased to feel how important it was for its new and hastily improvised civilization to be reinvigorated by continual influences from the civilization of the south, almost always offered to cover the cost of transport. By thus making their dominions accessible to foreigners of merit, and by other acts of munificence, Peter I and Catherine populated Moscow and Saint Petersburg with many Frenchmen and Germans, and opened the road north to our useful arts and our fine arts.

[C18-02 | source PDF 52–54]
The least expensive route was to embark at Le Havre or Lübeck; but as the former port seldom offered a passage, I resolved to travel by way of Hamburg. The same means of transport as today existed for Brussels, with less competition and consequently fewer advantages for the public. Once that city was left behind, sprung carriages disappeared altogether. Sometimes bundled in with the merchandise, and often without even a canvas overhead, you had no shelter but your umbrella or parasol, according to the weather. Long live the approach to trading cities, where one can roll in gold! This inconvenience was a real torment to me, for the gold was rolling beneath me, and I did not know how to get rid of the barrels of money placed between my legs. I will even confess, since the reader would supply the omission if I kept silent, that it was not without a little twinge of envy and greed that I pictured the phlegmatic Hamburg merchant taking his hammer to the protective stave and withdrawing the captive bags, only to imprison them again in his strongbox! Besides, I ought to have regarded finding myself in such good company as a favorable omen and an auspicious beginning to a journey in which the hope of making my fortune had also played its part. From that moment I knew that money was not lacking in Hamburg, and that if its inhabitants proved too sparing of it in our mutual dealings, there would at least be some ill will on their part.

[C18-03 | source PDF 54–54]
While crossing Hanover, my eyes were struck for the first time by the brilliance of the red coats. It was not a pleasant impression. The hostility between France and England had, so to speak, made hatred a personal matter among the people of both nations. I did not expect to see those scarlet uniforms again, fifteen years later, on the banks of the Seine.

[C18-04 | source PDF 54–55]
The changes of conveyance, language, currency, food and customs had seemed so many tribulations, and I was beginning to feel weary of them when I arrived in Hamburg. Like everyone else, I imagine, I found the city badly built, with narrow streets and filthy canals that exhaled very unhealthy miasmas in summer. Its large population keeps commerce extremely active. Even in Paris one still finds merchants who stand still amid the encroachments of luxury, always on guard against its advances, defending their shops against the stucco, brass, mahogany and gaslight whose brilliance adorns new establishments every day, and stubbornly hoarding behind modest counters. Worthy, honest souls! They would even oppose widening the Rue Tirecharpe to preserve its antique flavor. Well, what is an exception in Paris seemed to me the general rule in Hamburg.

[C18-05 | source PDF 55–56]
One soon has occasion to discover this mercantile spirit in the first dealings that the most ordinary needs establish between oneself and the inhabitants. Do you go to the baths? Your bath attendant will offer you the finest sugar and coffee. Does the clumsiness of your right hand, or having forgotten your dressing case, force you to resort to the barber? You receive as many offers of service as strokes of the razor. And do not imagine that these business proposals concern only accessories to his trade: he recites a catalogue of all the merchandise sailing the North Sea. Let us nevertheless do justice to their particular skill: they are praised throughout Europe for their dexterity. In his Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu imagined no law whose spirit was to teach the shaving of a chin to perfection. Such a law exists in Hamburg, where no one may become a surgeon without first having been apprenticed to a barber. It follows that those who fail to acquire enough skill to rise to surgical practice always have enough to remain past masters in the art of neatly clipping the bearded parts of the face.

[C18-06 | source PDF 56–56]
Is it not also a disposition particularly characteristic of cities where commerce is ingrained in the customs, this practice I found in Hamburg, and which I believe also exists in London, of putting a coin into the hand of the servant who invariably happens by chance to be on the doorstep when one dines out? This courtesy has, so to speak, a fixed tariff: one mark for a meal; if one has stayed the night, one gives the housemaid (klein mädchen) one mark and eight schillings.

[C18-07 | source PDF 56–57]
The reader may already suspect that letters of recommendation from solid bankers and long-established merchants are the surest means of securing a good reception in this Hanseatic city, where nobility is unknown and finance takes precedence over everything else. I knew this before leaving Paris. Letters of recommendation from the house of Richard Parisch, addressed to Messrs. Mathiesem and Sillem, Bertheau and Meyer, accordingly secured me as good a welcome from these various merchants as I could have wished, full of openness and cordiality.

[C18-08 | source PDF 57–57]
At the time of my arrival, Hamburg was flourishing, radiant with a prosperity that the Continental Blockade, a few years later, largely swept away; one might say that it almost ruined the city. During my stay, émigrés abounded there. Among others I shall name General Moreau, then an illustrious exile and afterward an unfortunate turncoat! He lived in Altona, doubtless because of the proximity of the French encamped at Harburg, separated from Hamburg only by the river, the majestic Elbe. Altona, in Denmark, is so close to Hamburg that their suburbs touch. But what a difference in their appearance! What calm, what cold tranquility in the first! In the second, what life, what bustle!

[C18-09 | source PDF 57–57]
Among the émigrés, since this eagerness to flee one’s country had become epidemic, I met one of my former schoolmates, for whom emigration had certainly not turned out badly. M. Lhoëst, a distinguished musician, owned a very fine property in Hamburg. We renewed our acquaintance, and he accompanied me on the splendid ascent of which I shall shortly tell my readers.

[C18-10 | source PDF 58–58]
The apparatus from my physics cabinet, packed in crates which I had preferred to entrust to road freight, did not arrive, and I was obliged to remain in Hamburg to wait for it, though this had not originally been part of my plan. I therefore began with physics demonstrations; but despite their novelty they seemed to hold little attraction for men whose sole passion was to achieve the aim of alchemy every day, that is, to turn everything into gold. Of an admirable tragedy a mathematician once said, “What does it prove?” Of the most astonishing electrical phenomena, the people of Hamburg would readily have said, “What does it bring in?” I therefore imagined that an aerostatic experiment would be more successful and make a stronger impression on imaginations so difficult to stir, on minds so practical.

[C18-11 | source PDF 58–59]
Once I had made this decision, my first concern was to make amends to the celebrated Professor Hermbstaedt of Berlin for the wrong done him by one of my compatriots, for which all artists of our nation who presented themselves in the same country might have been held jointly responsible. This was the affair: M. Jacques Garnerin, whose journey to Russia at that time was not unconnected with a certain far from praiseworthy desire to rival me, had been in Berlin shortly after my arrival in Hamburg. There he hastened to announce an ascent. M. d’Hermbstaedt at once sent word proposing to accompany him and agreed to pay the hundred gold fredericks demanded of him. Another fifty fredericks were required for the zinc, and these too were granted. Finally the aeronaut raised a new difficulty: he demanded that M. Hermbstaedt be at a certain distance from the capital, where his balloon would descend to collect him, together with the barometer and other scientific instruments the professor needed for various observations, which he would have been obliged to carry across the countryside while running after the balloon. One may suppose that the knowledge of so enlightened a physicist and so great a chemist alarmed Garnerin, and that he feared risking his reputation with such a traveling companion. The counselor to the King of Prussia was indignant at these wretched subterfuges employed to divert him from his intention, and the pamphlet in which he described the nature of his dealings with the aeronaut turned public indignation against the latter.

[C18-12 | source PDF 59–60]
I regarded it as a duty to act, as it were, as host in my basket to so distinguished a scientist, while also seeing in it an honor, a true pleasure and a precious opportunity to increase my knowledge. The following two letters will show how much M. d’Hermbstaedt appreciated the offer; they are also of some interest to science. Certainly I can accept the praise they bestow on me only as the compliments of a grateful courtesy, and I am not presumptuous enough to wish to present them here in any other light.

[C18-13 | source PDF 60–60]
“Sir,

[C18-14 | source PDF 60–60]
“The letter with which you honored me on April 27 gave me infinite pleasure. The interest you tell me you have taken, sir, in my dealings with M. Garnerin, your disinterestedness and the admirable frankness with which you have the kindness to offer me a place in the gondola of your excellent balloon to make chemical observations certainly deserve the gratitude with which I am filled and the very particular esteem I have devoted to you.

[C18-15 | source PDF 60–61]
“Being yourself a physicist, sir, you need no reminder from me of the importance of finding opportunities to enrich the sciences. Could the true physicist desire a better one than the chance to make observations in the highest regions of the atmosphere, where the air’s movement is unimpeded by the proximity of any high mountain? Near the earth, it may be corrupted by the processes of vegetation, respiration and the combustion of organic bodies, by mixtures, combinations and decompositions. At twelve or fifteen thousand feet above these regions, we can form no idea of what might occur. But to appreciate such observations and carry them out requires particular zeal and consideration of the progress they may bring to physics in general and to humanity.

[C18-16 | source PDF 61–62]
“This shows you in part, sir, what aims prompted me when I was on the point of accompanying M. Garnerin in his ascent from here to Berlin, granting him fifty louis for a small, cramped place in the gondola, and another twelve louis toward the expenses. From this you may also judge my distress when I discovered that he was concerned only with entertaining the public, that he lacked the spirit desirable for scientific undertakings, and when, finally, he treated me discourteously and forced me to abandon my good intentions. The enclosed papers will acquaint you with his conduct toward me.

[C18-17 | source PDF 62–62]
“What a difference, sir, between you and him! Zealous for the sciences and disinterested, you offer me a free place on your aerial journey, together with the use of the instruments in your cabinet. By telling me the dimensions of your balloon, you give me hope of traversing higher regions that M. Garnerin may never have known and that, moreover, hold no interest for him, since, uninspired by the sciences, he is content merely to entertain the public.

[C18-18 | source PDF 62–63]
“Had you been in M. Garnerin’s place, I should have been perfectly happy to undertake this journey in your company, and our combined efforts would certainly have fulfilled my wish to extend the knowledge of physics. But now I must give it up despite your obliging offers. My distance from Hamburg, my many daily occupations and the fact that I dare not undertake such a journey without the king’s express permission make the plan impracticable.

[C18-19 | source PDF 63–63]
“Meanwhile, sir, accept the sincere assurance of my gratitude for the disinterested and obliging offer you have made me. I shall eagerly seize every opportunity to convince you of my entire devotion and of the distinguished consideration with which I have the honor to call myself,

[C18-20 | source PDF 63–63]
“Your most humble and most obedient servant and fellow scholar,
“HERMBSTAEDT,
“Counselor and Professor to the King.
“Berlin, May 12, 1803.”

[C18-21 | source PDF 63–63]
“Sir,

[C18-22 | source PDF 63–63]
“From your letter of May 21 I perceive how much cause I have to regret that Berlin could not enjoy the instructive pleasure of seeing you, instead of M. Garnerin, and showing you the esteem you so particularly deserved, which was lavished on M. Garnerin, who in fact was unworthy of it.

[C18-23 | source PDF 63–64]
“With what pleasure I should have taken advantage of this favorable opportunity to accompany you on your interesting journey! With what zeal for the sciences we should have combined our observations!

[C18-24 | source PDF 64–64]
“I still find it hard to believe that the motive that led M. Garnerin to deceive me and my compatriots was founded on national pride, as stated in the newspaper you were kind enough to send me. At least your obliging offer, sir, has proved that I cannot presume to compare you with M. Garnerin, for you have risen above these trifles. You are a physicist and know that scholars acknowledge no national interest; that whenever the enrichment of our sciences is at stake, scholars of every nation form a single family whose members all strive to come together. But what can one expect of a Garnerin, who has no claim where knowledge is concerned, who looks for moonlight at seven in the evening on April 13, and who makes such ascents only to earn money!

[C18-25 | source PDF 64–65]
“You are unknown here in person, sir; but your letters, which I have shown to the most distinguished people, have inspired such esteem for you that I desire nothing more ardently than one day to accompany you from here on one of your journeys of atmospheric exploration, as I have reason to hope I may. We could undoubtedly then shed light on several questions in physics that have so far remained obscure.

[C18-26 | source PDF 65–65]
“My official duties compel me to leave for Frankfurt on the 10th of this month; I shall therefore not be here on June 9, the day of your ascent. But my thoughts will accompany you, and I burn with impatience for news of your safe descent. I shall then be sure to have your account inserted in the gazettes and public newspapers. As I expect to be back in Berlin on June 14 or 15, publication will not be long delayed.

[C18-27 | source PDF 65–65]
“If fine weather and other circumstances allow you to reach a height of eight to ten thousand feet and travel several thousand feet horizontally, you would oblige me infinitely by undertaking a few observations that interest me and that I shall communicate under your name to the Royal Academy of Sciences here, if the results are favorable, which remains to be determined. I should therefore be very curious to learn:

[C18-28 | source PDF 65–65]
“1. Where, and in what region of the atmosphere, are traces of electricity found?

[C18-29 | source PDF 65–66]
“2. Do positive and negative electricity vary in the vertical and horizontal directions, or is only one kind of electricity found in the upper regions?

[C18-30 | source PDF 66–66]
“3. Can pigeons or other small birds still fly at ten or eight thousand feet above the earth, and what is the greatest height at which they can maintain their balance?

[C18-31 | source PDF 66–66]
“4. At what temperature does water boil in these regions? Could the necessary degree of heat be moderated by combining quicklime and water?

[C18-32 | source PDF 66–66]
“5. Do alkaline and earthy carbonates dissolve in acids with effervescence in these regions?

[C18-33 | source PDF 66–66]
“6. What is the sound of wind instruments in these upper regions, and approximately how does its intensity differ from that produced on earth?

[C18-34 | source PDF 66–66]
“Experiments on acoustics, gravitation, the oscillations of the pendulum and the expansibility of ethereal fluids would indeed yield results of the greatest importance; but such experiments require the cooperation of people able to make corresponding observations on the ground.

[C18-35 | source PDF 66–67]
“Together with artillery lieutenants de Neandre and de Vossi, both men of merit and good mathematicians, we had agreed to make such observations, and these gentlemen had trained nearly a hundred young men for the purpose. His Majesty the king himself had granted the cannon and other necessary equipment. But M. Garnerin, who appears to take little interest in such research, preferred to ascend alone, or at least without a physicist, and to destroy our plan entirely.

[C18-36 | source PDF 67–67]
“How right you are, sir, to say in your letter of the 21st of this month: ‘Have all the Blanchards added one iota to science?’ They seem to have no aim but their purses and the entertainment of the ladies.

[C18-37 | source PDF 67–68]
“Here is what I stated in my correspondence with M. Garnerin concerning the purification of iron. M. Garnerin filled his balloon with hydrogen gas obtained by dissolving iron in sulfuric acid diluted with four parts of water. The price of zinc seemed too high to him; he therefore chose old iron, filings and turnings from a mechanic’s workshop. This iron was partly oxidized and partly coated with dried fatty oil, which would necessarily have impeded the acid’s action. I purified ten to twelve quintals of this iron for him by boiling it in a caustic alkaline lye, thus turning the oil into soap. M. Garnerin, fearing that the iron might run short, asked for another six quintals of zinc, requiring me to pay half the cost as compensation. I agreed, promising him twelve louis. But he dispensed with the zinc altogether and even kept the six quintals left over. He paid three to four louis per quintal for the iron, whereas a quintal of zinc would have cost him only twenty écus.

[C18-38 | source PDF 68–68]
“I shall be pleased, sir, to send you some letters of recommendation for Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Baron de Munckhausen is not here at present; otherwise I should have discharged my duty by asking him for letters of recommendation for you. Be assured, sir and most honorable fellow scholar, of the esteem and veneration with which I have the honor to be,

[C18-39 | source PDF 68–68]
“Your most devoted servant,
“HERMBSTAEDT.
“Berlin, June 1, 1803.”

[C18-40 | source PDF 68–69]
While this correspondence was passing between us, I had taken the necessary steps to obtain the indispensable authorization of Hamburg’s magistrates. It took no less than a month of sustained efforts to obtain the permission I sought. Once the day was fixed, the posters put up, the circulars delivered and almost all the preparations on the point of completion, the venerable Senate of Hamburg suddenly took fright. It imagined that the balloon might serve as a signal to the French encamped at Harburg to enter the city and seize it. Such is the suspicion of anything that might threaten their independence bred in small states by the difficulty of preserving it through their own strength! I was therefore forbidden to announce my ascent through posters or newspapers, and the Senate reserved the right to notify me of the day on which it would subsequently be allowed to take place. This postponement seriously harmed my interests, and the Senate’s reservation of the choice of date nearly proved fatal to my reputation.

[C18-41 | source PDF 69–70]
I therefore admit frankly and at once that this first ascent failed. But I may say, with Admiral Duperré, if only to preserve his fine words: “The elements were against me; I could oppose them only with human efforts.”[C18-N2] I was assigned June 22 and given only thirty hours’ notice. Apart from the obvious inadequacy of such an interval, a west wind that had been blowing for eight days gave me every reason to fear the worst. Nevertheless, I hurried everything forward. I spent the night on the Sternechanse, the “foreigners’ field.” The rain drenched us; the violence of the wind tore at my balloon and seemed at every instant about to wrench it from the hands of the twenty people employed to hold it, for we had been obliged to inflate it to fit the valve. Our hopes that a new tide at daybreak would change the weather came to nothing; and all our efforts to obtain at least another twenty-four hours brought only this reply: “Today or never.” There could be no more hesitation. At noon the filling was under way, and hydrogen gas was being released vigorously.

[C18-42 | source PDF 70–71]
The director of fortifications had revived my courage by promising to stretch canvas screens to protect the balloon from the violence of the wind, my greatest enemy. But the screens did not arrive until three o’clock, could not reach high enough and presented more disadvantages than advantages. The wind tormenting the balloon was at every moment on the point of destroying it, and so strong was its pressure that the gas was driven back and could not enter. At last a fresh squall broke the valve completely; the balloon snapped its ropes and escaped, driven by a wind so furious that it covered fourteen German miles in less than an hour, a speed never achieved by any other. Indeed, the annals of ballooning offer no example of so delicate an experiment attempted at a more tempestuous moment.

[C18-43 | source PDF 71–72]
Thus, through circumstances beyond my control, I found myself halted at my very debut, in the midst of my work and after considerable expense incurred in pure loss. Most of my subscribers, however, having witnessed my extraordinary efforts, lavished encouragement and consolation on me, and all applauded the promise I immediately made to repeat the experiment at my own expense, without subjecting the timing of my departure to a magistrate’s whim. The reader will soon see how happily I kept my promise. Yet I must confess that, although an aeronaut’s career has often been one of failures, this setback caused me great pain, and I then felt how fragile a thing reputation is. The desertion of the people who had most celebrated me and who now looked away when they met me in the streets; the attacks of a few enemies, those companions of fortune whom a man known for success of any kind sees spring from the earth almost everywhere; finally, the visits of some sixty people who came to demand the return of their subscriptions and paid themselves the discount in the sweet pleasure of reasoning, arguing and objecting—all this seemed overwhelming. I must nevertheless name several people from whom I then received fresh offers of protection and new proofs of kindness. Foremost I place the French ambassador, M. Reinhard, Messrs. Jone and Richard Parisch, M. Luis, Senator Meyer, M. Gries, Burgomaster Amzinck, M. Reimarus, Dr. Meyer and M. Bertheau, among others. Nor must I forget my friend and former schoolmate M. Lhoëst, who a month later enabled me to take such splendid revenge.

[C18-44 | source PDF 72–73]
I also hastened to seek consolation from benevolent science. I sent M. d’Hermbstaedt the story of my misfortune. He soon replied and, with noble delicacy, from that moment substituted “friend” for “sir” at the end of the following letter:

[C18-45 | source PDF 73–73]
“Sir,

[C18-46 | source PDF 73–73]
“I was deeply touched by the misfortune that befell you while filling your balloon, and I cannot express the painful surprise with which I learned of this accident from the Hamburg newspapers. What consoles me somewhat, however, is that the balloon is not entirely lost, for its loss would have meant a loss of twelve thousand francs. At first I could not conceive how you dared undertake so arduous an experiment despite the bad weather on June 22. But in your letter of June 29 you explained in detail the reasons that prompted you, and I understand them very well, knowing only too well the authority of Hamburg’s magistrates. The Prussian court would certainly have acted differently and would not have exposed the life of a respectable man to carry out a plan that was pure caprice.

[C18-47 | source PDF 73–74]
“I shall shortly leave here for Silesia, having returned only a few days ago from my first journey. On this new tour I expect to see Berlin again six or seven weeks from now, and I am impatient to learn whether you will make a second attempt in Hamburg. If you do, you will oblige me infinitely by performing the experiments I had the honor to indicate to you and communicating their results to me. Every observation you add will serve only to advance our sciences. Keep well, my honorable friend, and be assured of the esteem and affection with which I call myself,

[C18-48 | source PDF 74–74]
“Your friend and devoted servant,
“HERMBSTAEDT.
“Berlin, July 12, 1803.”

[C18-49 | source PDF 74–75]
The reader sees that my balloon had been found. Otherwise the loss would have been very considerable, for this superb machine was the largest and finest yet filled with hydrogen gas. The Senate, moreover, had so fully understood the unfortunate position into which its imperious will had placed me that it had two hundred ducats discreetly handed to me as compensation. Possession of my balloon allowed me to take my revenge more promptly. But where? Certainly not in Hamburg, where the magistrates wished to be able to say “Go!” as though it were a matter of giving a simple crack of the whip. In Altona? I could obtain no permission there, and had no better luck in Vansbeck. Amid these difficulties and my helplessness, my friend Lhoëst came to offer me his garden outside the city, and I accepted. There we made all our preparations, for it was decided that M. Lhoëst would make the journey, and we set up our apparatus. We worked throughout the night of July 17, 1803, and on the 18th, at eight in the morning, the balloon awaited only our command to launch itself into space.

[C18-50 | source PDF 75–76]
The Alster, a small river flowing into the Elbe, forms a charming lake near Hamburg beside the promenade called the Jungfernstieg. Ten sturdy sailors, coming down the Alster in a boat, brought the balloon into the middle of this lake. It was impatient to escape their efforts, although M. Lhoëst and I were already in the basket. This novel spectacle, in magnificent weather, drew the whole city around us. The senators themselves, about to enter council, left their stalls of Gothic woodwork and came running in full costume, with their great Henry IV ruffs and black cassock-like robes. Foreign visitors agreed that they had never seen a balloon of such imposing bulk, such beautiful shape or such perfect roundness. The yellow taffeta of its envelope, lit by the sun’s rays in all their brilliance, with the sun opposite the spectators, appeared to some as a golden globe and to others as a planet on fire. When we thought we had enough witnesses to our enterprise, we detached the rope holding us five hundred feet above the ground and rose majestically to the cheers and applause of the people of Hamburg and Altona, whose sounds merged together in our ears. The balloon rose almost vertically, and the crowd followed it with their eyes for two and a half hours before losing sight of it.

[C18-51 | source PDF 76–76]
Most European newspapers reported this ascent, remarkable both for the height we reached and for the observations of interest to physics that we were able to make. To avoid repetition, I shall insert here the account of this aerial journey that I later sent to the president of the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg on my arrival in that city.

[C18-52 | source PDF 77–77]
Aerostatic experiments and observations made at Hamburg on July 18, 1803, by E. G. Robertson, member of the Galvanic Society of Paris and honorary associate of the Hamburg Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and Sciences.

[C18-53 | source PDF 77–77]
To the President of the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg.

[C18-54 | source PDF 77–77]
“Anything that appears to contribute to the development and progress of the arts and sciences is certain of your welcome. On this ground, and in view of the interest His Excellency Minister de Forsman kindly takes in my work, I submit to you a few physiological and physical observations made at an elevation to which I did not aspire at the moment of departure.

[C18-55 | source PDF 77–78]
“For too long, ascents so costly to physicists have been sacrificed to frivolity and the amusement of the multitude, when they could have served a nobler and more useful purpose: to add something to our meteorological and physical knowledge. To obtain useful results and rise into the highest regions of the atmosphere required a balloon large enough to accommodate the effects of expansion and atmospheric rarefaction without losing its hydrogen gas. I found all these advantages in a spherical balloon thirty feet six inches in diameter, which particular circumstances had enabled me to acquire in Paris. This balloon was built with the greatest care at Meudon under M. Conté’s supervision; it was intended for the armies.

[C18-56 | source PDF 78–78]
“The experiment scheduled for June 22 was thwarted by a hurricane. On July 18, in calm weather, under a clear sky and on the finest day nature could offer, I repeated it at my own expense in a friend’s garden. To obtain my gas I used zinc so that I could make use of the residue, zinc sulfate being much in demand in Hamburg at the time. I began the operation at five in the morning, and by eight the balloon was two-thirds full and could lift 455 pounds, apart from the weight of the machine and net.

[C18-57 | source PDF 78–79]
“I departed at nine in the morning, accompanied by M. Lhoëst, my schoolmate and French compatriot, who had settled in this city. We had 140 pounds of ballast. The barometer read 28 inches, 0 lines; the Réaumur thermometer, 16 degrees. Despite a light northwest wind, the balloon rose so vertically and so high that in every street each person thought it directly overhead. To hasten our ascent, I released a silk parachute of parabolic shape, with compartments around its circumference intended to prevent oscillation. The animal it supported, enclosed in a basket, descended slowly, at two feet per second, and almost uniformly. From the moment the barometer began to fall, we husbanded our ballast prudently, so that we might feel less acutely the changes of temperature through which we were about to pass.

[C18-58 | source PDF 79–81]
“At ten fifteen the barometer stood at 19 inches and the thermometer at 3 degrees above zero. Feeling all the discomforts of excessively rarefied air gradually coming upon us, we began to arrange some experiments on atmospheric electricity. My first attempts failed, but I soon discovered the cause. I observed that, since the balloon was an isolated body in space and I myself formed part of that isolated body, I should have great difficulty determining the degree of electricity in the atmosphere and whether it was vitreous or resinous. To conduct the experiment, at least my instruments had to extend beyond the sphere of activity. I achieved this as follows. I arranged the rod of a gold-leaf electrometer as at A, figure 2, and established its connection below the gondola; I obtained divergence. I arranged in much the same way a very sensitive condenser, six inches in diameter, which I use in my galvanic experiments and which differs from Volta’s only in the varnish serving as the insulating substance between the two plates. The upper cap carried a hanging metal wire four hundred feet long. When drawing the apparatus back, I quickly removed this wire with an insulating handle. The condenser, connected to the electrometer as at D and B, figure 3, gave me not only the degree of electricity but its vitreous or resinous nature. I determined this easily by bringing a rubbed stick of sealing wax near it. At this height, which I supposed throughout to be that of the clouds, the electricity I obtained on three occasions was always vitreous.

[Original illustration: chapter-eighteen-fig-2.png]
Figure 2. Gold-leaf electrometer arranged below the balloon basket. Original drawing, Volume II, p.68.

[Original illustration: chapter-eighteen-fig-3.png]
Figure 3. Condenser and electrometer, with the box of air-sampling flasks C. Original drawing, Volume II, p.69.

[C18-59 | source PDF 81–83]
“We were often distracted from these various trials by the attention required by the balloon, whose taffeta stretched violently although the appendix was open. The gas escaped with a hiss and became visible on passing into a colder atmosphere. For fear of bursting, we were even obliged to give the hydrogen a second outlet by opening the valve. As much ballast remained, I proposed to my companion that we rise still higher. As zealous as I and more robust, he expressed the greatest desire to do so, although he was suffering considerable discomfort. We threw out ballast for some time; soon the barometer showed a progressive movement. At last the cold increased, and before long we saw it falling with extreme slowness. During our various trials we experienced anxiety and a general malaise. The ringing in our ears, from which we had long suffered, increased as the barometer passed below 13 inches. The pain resembled that felt when plunging one’s head into water. Our chests seemed expanded and lacked elasticity; my pulse was rapid, M. Lhoëst’s less so. Like me, he had swollen lips and bloodshot eyes; all the veins on my hands were rounded and stood out in relief. The blood rushed so strongly to his head that he remarked that his hat seemed too tight. The cold increased noticeably; the thermometer then fell rather abruptly to 2 degrees and settled at 5½ below freezing, while the barometer stood at 12 and 4/100 inches. Scarcely had I reached this atmosphere when my discomfort increased. I was in a state of mental and physical apathy; we could barely resist a drowsiness we feared as death. Distrusting my strength and fearing that my traveling companion might succumb to sleep, I had tied a rope to my thigh and to his, its end passing through our hands. In this condition, ill suited to delicate experiments, we had to begin the observations I intended.[C18-N3]

[C18-60 | source PDF 83–83]
“Revived by a little wine, we first repeated with the electrometer and condenser the experiment described above, and obtained not an atom of electricity.

[C18-61 | source PDF 83–83]
First experiment

[C18-62 | source PDF 83–84]
“At this elevation, glass, sulfur and sealing wax do not become appreciably electrified by friction; at least I could collect none of this electricity on conducting bodies or on the electrometer. I attribute the difficulty of accumulating electricity in these circumstances to the isolation of the body producing it, in which electricity cannot be replenished from the common reservoir.

[C18-63 | source PDF 84–85]
“To work effectively, I arranged my apparatus as follows. Since the upper plate of Volta’s condenser can gain only as much as the lower plate loses, and vice versa, I attached a gold thread of the kind used by embroiderers to an insulated conductor fixed to the edge of my gondola, as at B, figure 4. A little lead was fastened to the end of this thread, which hung very far below us; through this channel I could lose or acquire electricity. I acknowledge that as long as we remained at this elevation the apparatus gave no sign of electricity. But I derived the greatest advantage from it when the barometer rose above 18 inches, at approximately 1,500 toises. As the balloon descended, the metal thread C, figure 4, was first to enter the lower regions, where it received electricity that passed to my conductor B and caused my electrometer E to diverge. I distinguished the positive or negative nature of this fluid by bringing near it a rubbed piece of sealing wax, which stopped the divergence if the electricity was positive and made it more noticeable if it was negative.

[Original illustration: chapter-eighteen-fig-4.png]
Figure 4. Suspended conducting thread C and electrometer E. Original drawing, Volume II, p.72.

[C18-64 | source PDF 85–85]
Second experiment

[C18-65 | source PDF 85–85]
“I had brought in my basket a Voltaic pile composed of sixty pairs of silver and zinc. It worked very well at our departure, giving one degree on Volta’s electrometer without a condenser. At our greatest elevation the pile gave only 5/60 of a degree on the same electrometer. The galvanic flash seemed to me much more perceptible than on earth; this effect appears contradictory. I propose to make a series of experiments on all these effects at my next ascent.

[C18-66 | source PDF 86–86]
Third experiment

[C18-67 | source PDF 86–86]
“A carefully suspended dipping needle indicated 42 degrees at our departure. It gradually left its position. Its oscillations, at first barely perceptible, increased by degrees. They slowed as the balloon approached the earth, and at the moment of our arrival the needle settled at the same point it had indicated on departure.

[C18-68 | source PDF 86–86]
Fourth experiment

[C18-69 | source PDF 86–87]
“I detonated ten grains of oxygenated muriate of potash. The explosion produced only a sharp, piercing report, without being loud, but it affected the ear unbearably and painfully. Noticing that I could scarcely hear my traveling companion’s voice, although he spoke quite loudly, I was led to make some trials with sound. All the sounds I tried to produce by striking various metallic bodies were barely perceptible to us, although their vibrations lasted a long time. It would undoubtedly be interesting to know how a tuning fork would vibrate; but what means could the physicist use as a measure of the pitch it would assume in rarefied air?

[C18-70 | source PDF 87–87]
Fifth experiment

[C18-71 | source PDF 87–87]
“To discover at what temperature water boiled at this elevation, I used quicklime to produce heat. But through an oversight pardonable in my condition, I placed my thermometer in the vessel producing the heat instead of the one intended to receive it. The instrument was affected so suddenly, at the very moment I noticed my error, that I could not save it.

[C18-72 | source PDF 87–87]
“It is certain that when the water began to boil I could put my hand into it.

[C18-73 | source PDF 87–87]
Sixth experiment

[C18-74 | source PDF 87–88]
“A drop of vitriolic ether evaporated in four seconds. Its smell affected us painfully but usefully. This circumstance made me realize that on a journey to this elevation it is indispensable to carry a vial of volatile alkali and very strong vinegar, in short, some stimulant that, by exciting the fibers, drives away the drowsiness and sleep that overwhelm the physicist and rob him of the ability needed for his research. At this height our state was one of indifference. There the physicist no longer responds to glory or the passion for discovery; even the danger arising on such a journey from the slightest negligence scarcely concerns him. Only with the help of a little strengthening wine does he manage to recover intervals of clarity and will.

[C18-75 | source PDF 88–89]
“Since I wish to omit nothing that may shed light on the functions of the animal economy and the operations of nature at this elevation, I must observe that while the barometer still stood at 12 inches, my companion offered me bread. I made vain efforts to swallow it and never succeeded. If one carefully considers the state of the atmosphere in which I found myself, whose great rarefaction offered only slight resistance to my expanding chest, and the small quantity of oxygen that the fluid in which I floated must contain, one may believe that my stomach, already full of denser air and impoverished by the loss of oxygen, was unfit to receive solid food, still less to digest it. I must add that natural secretions were suspended in both my friend and me during the five hours of the journey and did not resume until three hours after our return to earth.

[C18-76 | source PDF 89–89]
Seventh experiment

[C18-77 | source PDF 89–89]
“I had brought two birds. When the time came for the experiment, I found one dead, doubtless from the rarefaction of the air; the other seemed drowsy. After placing it on the edge of the gondola, I tried to frighten it into flying away. It moved its wings but stayed where it was. I then released it, and it fell vertically with extreme speed. There is no doubt that birds could not sustain themselves at this elevation. I greatly regret that three pigeons intended for me could not be placed in my basket in time for this experiment. At my next ascent I certainly intend to repeat it, bringing a small hawk or other birds of prey that appear favored by nature for rising into the highest regions of the atmosphere.

[C18-78 | source PDF 90–90]
Eighth experiment

[C18-79 | source PDF 90–90]
“Alkaline carbonates dissolve in acids with very great effervescence. The action appeared livelier and stronger in muriatic acid. These acids were at the same degree of saturation.

[C18-80 | source PDF 90–90]
Ninth experiment

[C18-81 | source PDF 90–90]
“New facts concerning optics also present themselves to the physicist in the upper regions. The lower atmosphere was perfectly clear, while that above our heads was gray and misty, so that the beautiful azure blue then visible to a person on earth no longer existed for us. (It should be noted that the weather was calm and serene, and the day the finest nature could offer.) The sun did not seem dazzling to us; its heat had diminished with our elevation. It was nonexistent when one held a hand outside the gondola, and faintly perceptible inside, where its rays underwent a slight reflection.

[C18-82 | source PDF 90–91]
“Many experiments remain to be made at this elevation on the effects of the prism, the sun’s light and heat, the pendulum, sound and certain chemical operations. I regret not having brought a concave mirror and a burning glass to concentrate the sun’s rays on various substances, so as to compare their effects with those we obtain at the earth’s surface.

[C18-83 | source PDF 91–92]
“At eleven thirty the balloon was no longer visible from Hamburg; at least no one assured us that they had observed us at that hour. The sky beneath our feet was so clear that every object within a diameter of more than twenty-five leagues appeared before our eyes with the greatest precision, but on the scale of the smallest miniature. At eleven forty the city of Hamburg appeared only as a red dot; the Elbe traced a white line like a very narrow ribbon. I wanted to use a Dollon telescope, but to my surprise I found it so cold on taking it up that I had to wrap it in my handkerchief to hold it. At our greatest elevation, a few clouds arose beneath our feet toward the east, but at such a distance that my friend thought a town was on fire. Light, reflected differently by clouds than by the earth, gives them rounder forms and a whitish color dazzling as snow. Many objects, such as houses, lakes and woods, appeared to us as hollows.

[C18-84 | source PDF 92–92]
“Unable to endure our painful situation as long as we should have wished, we descended after losing much gas and ballast. Our descent showed us the terror a balloon as large as ours can inspire in a country where such machines have never been seen. We happened to be descending directly over a poor village called Badenbourg, amid the heaths of Hanover. Our appearance spread alarm there, and the inhabitants hastened to bring the cattle in from the fields.

[C18-85 | source PDF 92–93]
“As our balloon descended fairly rapidly, we waved our hats and streamers and called the inhabitants toward us, but our voices increased their terror.[C18-N4] The villagers ran about in confusion, uttering dreadful cries. They abandoned their herds, whose bellowing added to the alarm. By the time the balloon touched the earth, everyone had shut themselves indoors. After calling several times in vain, and fearing that fright might drive them to violence, we thought it prudent to rise again. I resolved on this all the more gladly because I wished to make a third trial of the electricity, which I had twice found positive.

[C18-86 | source PDF 93–94]
“This second ascent exhausted our ballast completely. We foresaw that we should need it, for the balloon, having floated for a long time in a very rarefied atmosphere, was slack and had lost much gas. Nevertheless, we traveled another ten leagues. I foresaw that our descent would be extremely rapid. As I had no ballast left, I gathered everything in the basket: the scientific instruments, even the barometer, the bread, ropes, bottles and belongings, down to the money we carried. I put all these objects into three bags that had contained sand, attached them to a rope and lowered them a hundred feet below the gondola. This device spared us the shock of landing. The weight reached the ground before the balloon, which was thereby lightened by more than thirty pounds. It descended more slowly onto the heath between Wichtenbeck and Hanover, after traveling twenty-five leagues in five and a half hours.

[C18-87 | source PDF 94–94]
“The official record reported by the Hamburg correspondent was signed by M. Land, Commissioner Weihe and Candidate Raven, who kindly lent us their carriage to convey the balloon to the first post station.

[C18-88 | source PDF 94–94]
“The barometer I used was partly of my own making; its cistern measured four inches so that the level would vary less. I could use only the Réaumur thermometer, although I should have preferred Fahrenheit’s.

[C18-89 | source PDF 94–94]
The barometer on the ground before my departure stood at:
28 inches = 336 lines = log. 2.5263393
In the upper atmosphere:
12 inches = 144 lines = log. 2.1583625
Difference = 0.3679768
Multiplied by: 10,600
Gives in toises: 0.36797680000
Or multiplied by: 6
22078608 feet.

[Original illustration: chapter-eighteen-calculation.png]
Original barometric calculation, Volume II, p.82. Its printed numerical inconsistencies are retained in the translation and discussed in the editorial record.

[C18-90 | source PDF 94–94]
“One could add 600/1000 of a foot.

[C18-91 | source PDF 94–95]
“I know that M. Deluc did not use Réaumur’s thermometer; he divided his own according to the following proportion: 215 : 509 = 80 : 186. The fourth proportional indicated how many divisions he could allow between the freezing point and that of boiling water. Taking these various corrections into account, and following the proportions given by M. Fastner, the balloon’s elevation may be estimated at 3,679 toises.

[C18-92 | source PDF 95–95]
“Whatever zeal I brought to this ascent in the hope of obtaining some useful result, I believe much remains for me to do to confirm and firmly establish the accuracy of several facts that presented themselves to me. Left to my limited resources in a foreign country, but one well suited to observation, I shall be happy to have shown myself worthy of the encouragement lavished on me there.”

[Original illustration: chapter-eighteen-tailpiece.png]


Original notes

[C18-N1 | source PDF 50–52]
Following my practice of placing useful information before the reader whenever the occasion arises, I give here a few details of the new facilities for travel to Russia through the services of the Messageries générales de France.
FARES IN 1830
FIRST-CLASS STAGECOACH SEATS. Amounts in francs and centimes.
Paris to Brussels (front compartment): 52.00
Brussels to Amsterdam (front compartment): 30.50
Amsterdam to Hamburg (ladies’ cabin, meals included): 121.00
Hamburg to Lübeck: 21.25
Lübeck to Saint Petersburg (first cabin, meals included): 304.15
Total: 528.90
SECOND CLASS
Paris to Brussels (inside): 43.00
Brussels to Amsterdam: 30.50
Amsterdam to Hamburg (forward cabin, meals excluded): 84.65
Hamburg to Lübeck: 21.25
Lübeck to Saint Petersburg (second cabin, meals included): 228.60
Total: 408.00
The steamboat leaves Amsterdam for Hamburg every Sunday.
STEAMBOAT DEPARTURES BETWEEN LÜBECK AND SAINT PETERSBURG IN 1830
FROM LÜBECK
May: 5, 20
June: 3, 17
July: 15, 29
August: 12, 26
September: 9, 23
October: 7
FROM SAINT PETERSBURG
May: 13, 27
June: 10, 24
July: 8, 22
August: 5, 19
September: 2, 16, 30
October: 14
To reach Lübeck on the 6th, one would have to leave Amsterdam on the 2nd.
This passage is also made by pyroscaphes (steamboats), at a price of 24 francs or 18 Dutch ducats per person, meals excluded.

[C18-N2 | source PDF 69–69]
Admiral Duperré’s dispatch on the storm that had forced the fleet, already within sight of Algiers, to regroup in the Bay of Palma.

[C18-N3 | source PDF 83–83]
To collect atmospheric air we had brought a box containing eight flasks with steel stopcocks. The mercury was intended to replace the atmospheric air. See C, figure 3.

[C18-N4 | source PDF 92–92]
We later learned that the villagers had taken us for a bird they believe invulnerable, known in their superstition as the iron bird or steel eagle.

Editorial record

The source gives1802 and calls it about fifteen years before the Russian expedition; it also says fifteen years later for red uniforms on the Seine. These historical time spans are retained without silent correction. The1830 fare table and1831 present-tense comparison remain those of the source, although this copy is the1840 edition.

All fares and sailing dates in the original note are preserved. Both fare totals recompute correctly:528.90 and408.00 francs. The last sentence really prints24 francs or18 Dutch ducats; the surprising equivalence is not silently repaired. No unprinted July sailing is supplied.

Coupé is the front compartment of a stagecoach; cajute is a ship’s cabin. The heading mentions stagecoach seats even though subsequent legs use ships. Historical monetary units fredericks, marks and schillings are retained without conversion. Pyroscaphes is retained with the source’s own explanation, steamboats.

The satirical phrase about rolling in gold preserves the literal cargo and the idiom of wealth. The printed forms Tirecharpe, Richard Parisch, Mathiesem and klein mädchen are retained. English consistently uses Hermbstaedt; the source also prints the transposition Hermsbtaedt. Robertson’s accusations and historical claims are translated as his account.

Both letters, including salutations, signatures, dates and all six scientific questions, are translated in full. The first letter is dated12 May1803, not the OCR reading iv. The source’s fee amounts differ between Robertson’s narrative (100 and50 fredericks) and Hermbstaedt’s letters (50 and12 louis); the differences are retained.

The second letter is dated1 June1803 but says departure on the10th of this month prevents attendance on9 June, and later refers to a letter of the21st of this month. All these dates are retained as printed. Its phrase “from here to Berlin” in the first letter is also retained without supplying an inferred departure point.

Aérognostiques is rendered journeys of atmospheric exploration. Alkaline and earthy carbonates, ethereal fluids and the proposed quicklime experiment retain the historical scientific vocabulary and questions. The original quintals, feet, louis and écus are not silently converted. Baron de Munckhausen follows the printed name.

The printed Sternechanse is retained, together with Robertson’s own gloss “foreigners’ field”; it is not silently replaced with a modern place-name or corrected translation. The14 German miles,30hours’ notice,200ducats,500-foot tether height and two-and-a-half-hour observation time are retained as printed. His phrase about subscribers paying themselves the discount is preserved as a financial metaphor; no unprinted refund amount is supplied.

All46 consecutive text pages, four author notes, three complete Hermbstaedt letters and all nine numbered experiments are retained. In the ascent report, at my next ascent renders à ma première ascension in its prospective context. The42-degree dipping needle,5/60-degree electrometer reading,5½ degrees below freezing and12 4/100-inch barometer reading were read directly from the page images, where OCR lost or corrupted the fractions.

The original barometric calculation is numerically inconsistent. Its printed multiplier10,600, result0,36797680000 and final22078608 feet are retained as printed, with decimal commas changed to points in the English decimal values. The original calculation is also reproduced as a source crop. The two logarithms subtract to0.3679768; multiplying by10,600 does not give the printed result. The following600/1000 of a foot, ratio215:509=80:186 and final claimed3,679toises are retained without silently repairing the arithmetic. The earlier12 4/100-inch reading also differs from the12-inch value used in the calculation.

Vitreous and resinous electricity retain historical terminology; the author later uses positive and negative. Appendix denotes the balloon’s open lower neck, not a book appendix. Condenser, Voltaic pile, gold-leaf electrometer, dipping needle, burning glass and sealing wax follow the earlier technical vocabulary. The small hawk renders émouchet without asserting a precise modern species. Dollon and Fastner follow the printed names; Candidate Raven retains the original title without inferring a profession.

The observations and physiological explanations are Robertson’s historical claims, not modern scientific conclusions. The apparent visibility of escaping hydrogen, effects on bodily secretions, bird experiment, boiling water claim and proposed chemical trials are translated as printed. The three positive-electricity trials described earlier and the later claim of two prior trials are both retained. The source ends the quoted report without a closing guillemet; English supplies the closing quotation mark.

Volume II, Chapter III

Stops in the air. How high a balloon can rise. The shape of clouds and their appearance from above. Atmospheric experiments. Analysis of the air brought back. War on Hamburg’s lightning conductors. The little gardens and the pretty girls. My experiments repeated by Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac. No salvation outside the Institute. Fire pistons, despite the Academy of Sciences. Why M. Gay-Lussac rather than me?

[C19-01 | source PDF 96–96]
My ascent of July 18 had filled the people of Hamburg with enthusiasm. The Senate, the diplomatic corps and the leading inhabitants vied with one another in expressing their wish to enjoy this enchanting spectacle a second time. A subscription was opened in the city and filled in less than eight days. The scientists undertook to put questions to me and, through their own work and particular observations, to supplement the new experiments I wished to attempt.

[C19-02 | source PDF 96–97]
Among the letters sent to me from various quarters, some contained ingenious or useful suggestions; several called for experiments that could not be carried out. M. Land, whose signature appeared in the report of my descent, had conceived the idea of making stops in the air and characterizing the different heights at which we paused by observing every phenomenon that could be examined. But the essential point, the very means of making these stops, offered no possibility of execution. M. Land believed that, after rising with the smallest possible surplus of ballast, the balloon would come into equilibrium with the surrounding air and cease to ascend. He advised the aeronaut to throw out a bag of ballast of a specified weight: a stopping point would then be reached again, and throwing out another bag would lead to a new height, and so on. The descent would be regulated by successively releasing as much gas as ballast had been thrown out, the quantity of gas being determined by the capacity of a tube, in the form of an appendage, which would be added to the balloon.

[C19-03 | source PDF 97–98]
M. Land’s error arose from his failure to take account of the nature of the envelopes from which balloons are made. Certainly, if the gas could be enclosed in a vessel whose volume could be kept constant and which could not be ruptured by the expansive force of the gas, things might happen as M. Land had imagined: the balloon would necessarily become stationary when it reached the point at which its weight exactly equaled the weight of the volume of air it displaced. But with a machine whose volume changes as the gas enclosed within it expands, and whose envelope is so fragile that the aeronaut must remain constantly alert to prevent the expansive force of the gas from bursting it, we can readily see that things must happen quite differently; that the experiment M. Land proposed presents insurmountable difficulties; and that the balloon can remain stationary without danger only when it has reached the height at which the expansive force of the gas is in equilibrium with that of the surrounding air. This brings us to the outermost layers of the atmosphere.

[C19-04 | source PDF 98–99]
M. Pfaff, the learned and celebrated professor of physics and chemistry at Kiel, wrote to me on this subject a few days after my ascent from Hamburg, expressing an opinion that agreed with mine: “You speak,” he told me, “of a certain height at which inflammable gas (hydrogen) will probably find itself in equilibrium in the atmosphere. I believe this height is the limit of the atmosphere itself; for, since inflammable gas has a much greater specific elasticity than atmospheric air, it will expand progressively as it rises into the higher regions of the atmosphere, and its specific gravity will diminish in the same proportion as that of atmospheric air. It will therefore always and invariably be lighter in specific gravity than atmospheric air, and will cease to rise only when it has reached a point above the atmosphere itself. This is why a balloon filled with inflammable gas will rise to an indefinite height if two conditions can be fully met: first, that the inflammable gas can expand without escaping from the balloon as it rises; second, that the inflammable gas contained in the balloon does not mix at all with atmospheric air.”

[C19-05 | source PDF 99–99]
M. Pfaff had offered to accompany me if I made a second ascent, and I had gladly accepted the learned professor’s offer, firmly convinced that we would bring back useful observations from above.

[C19-06 | source PDF 99–99]
I fixed August 14 for the ascent.

[C19-07 | source PDF 99–100]
As my iron was badly oxidized, I used a particular method to remove this condition: I suspended a barrel between two axles, half filled it with old scrap iron and a small quantity of water, and had it rotated for a considerable time. The repeated rubbing of the pieces of iron against one another restored the metal to the degree of purity needed to make it more readily attacked by the acid.

[C19-08 | source PDF 100–100]
The weather, though less fine than on July 18, was nevertheless favorable, and the crowd of spectators was immense.

[C19-09 | source PDF 100–100]
Despite his keen desire to take a place in my balloon, M. Pfaff could not fulfill his wish. The entreaties, affection and anxieties of a wife and a mother forced him to abandon his resolution. I therefore departed with my friend Lhoëst at 12:42, the barometer showing 27 inches 11 lines and the thermometer 21 degrees. On reaching a certain height, I released two parachutes of different diameters carrying equal weights, to assess the resistance of the air.

[C19-10 | source PDF 100–101]
At 12:51 we were ascending between two majestic clouds that seemed to part to offer us a passage. These masses of whitish vapor are elongated in shape, with long shreds hanging perpendicular to the earth. Their upper parts do not, as a whole, present the smooth surface we see from the ground, but end in cones or pyramids. This effect is doubtless due to caloric, which makes them into a kind of balloon or hot-air balloon whose elevation corresponds to the density of the atmosphere. These imposing masses of vapor seemed to rush headlong toward the earth, as though to plunge into an abyss. But this optical illusion was due to the apparent immobility of the balloon, which was traveling about 20 feet per second.

[C19-11 | source PDF 101–101]
The fear of losing sight of the Baltic Sea, which we glimpsed at intervals between the clouds, obliged us to abandon our plan to rise as high as on the previous occasion. The barometer stood at 15 inches and the thermometer at one degree below zero. I released two pigeons: one descended along a shallow diagonal, its wings half open and motionless, at a speed resembling a fall; the other fluttered for a moment, then settled beside us and refused to leave. At Dr. Reimarus’s suggestion I made the same trial with butterflies. The air proved too rarefied: they tried in vain to rise, but did not leave the basket.

[C19-12 | source PDF 101–102]
With a double-convex lens of six inches focal length, I tried to burn tinder, sulfur and other substances; I succeeded only after several minutes. I poured the mercury out of a bottle to collect air from the region surrounding me.

[C19-13 | source PDF 102–102]
At Dr. Rheitre’s suggestion I had brought bladders filled with atmospheric air to one-half, one-third and one-quarter of their capacity. They expanded in proportion to the air they contained. The first had burst before the barometer reached 20 inches.

[C19-14 | source PDF 102–102]
I observed that light refracted by a prism no longer displays its vivid, distinct colors: they are pale and confused. Weights suspended from a spring balance lose some of their weight; the dipping needle seemed to me to resume its oscillations.

[C19-15 | source PDF 102–102]
By means of an ingenious instrument made by M. Hetz, a mechanic, I confined four inches of the surrounding air with mercury. The level was set, and on my return to earth the mercury filled the siphon to within one-tenth.

[C19-16 | source PDF 102–103]
As the wind continued to carry me toward the sea, I resolved to end my observations. I descended into a meadow beside a forest near the village of Rehorst, in Holstein, after traveling about 16 French leagues in 65 minutes. We were kindly received by M. Balemann, the pastor at Reinfeld, an educated man who offered us hospitality and every assistance in his power.

[C19-17 | source PDF 103–103]
The air I had brought back was analyzed by Dr. Schmeisser. His analysis did not give the same results as M. Gay-Lussac’s, for he found an appreciable decrease in the proportion of oxygen. This is very probable, and indeed quite consistent with the opinion of several distinguished physicists who have taken their investigations beyond the laboratory.

[C19-18 | source PDF 103–104]
The success of the two ascents I have just described made my stay in Hamburg very pleasant and brought me many acquaintances. Among them I singled out several learned men whose knowledge and affability partly effaced the unfavorable impression their compatriots’ money-making disposition had made on me. I owe a particular remembrance to Canon Meyer, author of a highly regarded work on France; to M. Bertheau; and to Dr. Schuthz, a somewhat extraordinary inhabitant of the noble Hanseatic city, since, though eminently learned, he carried his disinterestedness as far as his science. Finally there was Dr. Reymarus, whom, quite apart from his distinguished merit, a little dispute scarcely worthy of the name scientific would not allow me to forget. This was its subject.

[C19-19 | source PDF 104–105]
Many houses in Hamburg are equipped with lightning conductors. I had noticed that the Hamburgers’ parsimonious habits had led them to bargain even with lightning, and that everywhere they seemed to begrudge the iron. Not only were the little Gascon rapiers that crowned their buildings too short to extend their protection along the whole dwelling, since, as everyone knows, a lightning conductor protects only the space within a circle of which it forms the radius; the conducting wires, too, all approximately equal in length regardless of the unequal heights of the houses, dipped into the canals only at high tide. The ebb exposed the bases of the buildings to a height of fifteen or eighteen feet. Since the electricity was no longer conducted to the common reservoir, it had to escape, spread to one side or the other and cause great damage, especially when one considers that the space exposed by the ebb, between the lower ends of these conductors and the ground, is precisely where the cellars and storerooms containing highly flammable materials, oils, spirits of wine and the like, are situated. I publicly explained these observations in my physics lectures. The neighborhood where I lived was stirred up; several physicians, among them the learned Dr. Reymarus, vigorously defended the honor of Hamburg’s lightning conductors in the newspapers. The journal La Minerve, edited by M. D’Hachenhole of Altona, was particularly zealous in pressing their objections. The outcome of the quarrel was that I had judged the city’s bad lightning conductors and not its good ones: they proved to me that there were two or three whose construction was not faulty. I thus conceded my opponents were right three times, on condition that they conceded I was right a hundred times, and the debate ended there.

[C19-20 | source PDF 105–107]
I have already said that during the great heats these canals gave off pestilential exhalations. One of the most obvious causes of these miasmas is the habit in Hamburg of throwing out of the windows and into the canals all the coarse refuse that is deposited beside the street posts in cities where public cleanliness is better supervised, and even of doing worse. The sea’s ebb and flow are insufficient to purge them of this foul matter, piled in every day. It stagnates there for entire years, swells under the heat of the sun and gives off harmful gases. Instinct, even more than prudent foresight, therefore seems to have inspired all Hamburgers with a taste for vegetation and an eagerness to cultivate it. Their smallest streets are lined with trees, all their windows clothed in plants or shrubs, and their gardens generally magnificent. These fine gardens, though the most renowned, are perhaps not the most deserving of a foreigner’s attention. There are smaller ones where the merchant, becoming a private citizen at certain hours of the day, often goes to savor sweet pleasures. It seems, indeed, to be considered proper for a merchant of any standing to own his little garden, where he can sometimes entertain friends at an intimate party and sometimes gather his family on Sunday or the Sabbath, according to his religion. Yet this would give no hint of all the pleasures and uses of these charming retreats unless one added that Hamburg’s maidservants, generally young and pretty and usually from the country, almost all make one condition when entering service: that they may have an hour in the day for their own affairs. That is why one so often meets these pretty Mädchen, a basket on their arm, on the Jungfernstieg and other fashionable promenades. Their youth, freshness and coquettish dress make them seem by no means out of place there.

[C19-21 | source PDF 107–107]
After a six-month stay in this city, I made preparations to go at last to Saint Petersburg. But before leaving Hamburg, the scene of my first two ascents, especially the one that brought me the greatest honor and whose memories are therefore the most agreeable to me, I shall include in this chapter an account of its scientific consequences. I would otherwise have to retrace my steps if I deferred telling them until the time when they occurred. I hope this account will not be without interest to those embarking on a career in science. They will see what justice they may expect from those learned men who, appointed and even paid to encourage and sustain the emulation of people engaged in useful research, for the most part use this august mission only to make science an exclusive domain for themselves and their dependents.

[C19-22 | source PDF 108–108]
We have seen the interest taken in my ascents by the most distinguished physicists, especially M. Pfaff, professor of physics and chemistry at Kiel, and Messrs. Hermbstaedt and Klaproth, counselors and professors in Berlin. We have seen how zealously these learned men communicated their ideas to me so that my ascents might benefit science, and how eagerly I devoted every effort to meeting their wishes. The results of my experiments had attracted the attention of most of Europe’s learned societies. The scientific journals had taken up the account, and other periodicals had repeated it. Now here is what followed in Paris.

[C19-23 | source PDF 108–109]
I had sent the Galvanic Society, which had elected me a member for my early work on the discovery of galvanism, a copy of the memoir presented to the Imperial Academy of Saint Petersburg, as I have given it above, on page 65. The man whom the society charged with reporting on my memoir was a professor of physical science at one of the Paris lycées. He was well known to the Institute’s Class of Physical Sciences through two works it had received very favorably. Evidence of this may be found in two reports made to that class, one by M. Vauquelin on Atmospheric Lithology, the other by M. Hallé on the Manual of Galvanism. In his report on my memoir, after some general reflections in which he considered why the heavens, the earth and the seas had been studied by philosophers in every age, while what lies between earth and heaven had, so to speak, only in our own day begun to form part of human knowledge, this professor added: “For the knowledge we have yet to acquire in the atmosphere, ballooning will be what navigation has been for the knowledge acquired of the mixture of solid and liquid that constitutes the globe we inhabit; with this difference, however, that the progress of ballooning seems likely to be much slower. Since the regions of the air offer no bait to human greed, the capitalist will not open his coffers to have them explored. Only the munificence of government could undertake these great and useful experiments.

[C19-24 | source PDF 109–110]
“In this state of affairs,” he added, “what will we not owe to those physicists who find the means to follow their zeal and, by their own efforts, anticipate discoveries that seem destined only for future generations! Such is the example our colleague Robertson sets them, and in this respect he will deserve a place beside the Montgolfiers, the Charleses and the Pilâtres.”[C19-N1]

[C19-25 | source PDF 110–110]
Turning then to examine my memoir, the rapporteur said: “The first observations our colleague communicates to us are already of great interest. Some belong to physiology; the others to four distinct branches of physics, namely air pressure, optics, magnetism and electricity. This is the order in which I shall present their results.”

[C19-26 | source PDF 110–110]
An analysis of the facts set out in my memoir followed, and the report ended with this conclusion.

[C19-27 | source PDF 110–111]
“M. Robertson promises us further experiments on this subject and on several other points of physics. It is to be hoped that he will repeat them often, and the Galvanic Society can only encourage him to do so, while thanking him for communicating his first trials.”

[C19-28 | source PDF 111–111]
After this reading, Senator d’Aboville, who was presiding over the meeting, rose and said “that if the Society was as deeply impressed as he was by the benefits science might derive from the facts whose analysis it had just heard, and from the reflections accompanying them in the report, it would order the report printed.” This was unanimously resolved, and indeed the report was published in full in the Moniteur of 4 Pluviôse, Year XII (January 25, 1804).

[C19-29 | source PDF 111–112]
At one of the meetings of the Institute’s Class of Sciences following publication of this report, M. de Laplace proposed using the means offered by ballooning to verify certain points of physics at great heights, especially those concerning the magnetic property in which Saussure had believed he detected an appreciable weakening during his experiments on the Col du Géant. He added that, since the government had allotted the Institute certain funds for useful experiments, it seemed very appropriate to employ them in such research. M. Berthollet and several other members who also had experiments or verifications to propose supported M. de Laplace’s view. The proposal could not have been made under more favorable circumstances, since one of the most distinguished members of this class of the Institute, M. Chaptal, was then Minister of the Interior. The decision was therefore taken at once, and Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac were chosen to carry it out. No better choice could have been made: these two scientists were the youngest and most ardent professors of the time.

[C19-30 | source PDF 112–112]
Preparation of the balloon was entrusted to the same M. Conté whom Coutelle had taken as his associate, as we saw on page 16, when he was appointed commander of a company of aeronauts serving with the armies. It was in this same capacity, as commander of aeronauts, that M. Conté had accompanied the army to Egypt. Everything concerning preparation of the balloon could therefore have been placed in no better hands. On the day fixed for the ascent, the new aeronauts consequently had only to climb into the basket with their instruments and their plans for experiments.

[C19-31 | source PDF 112–113]
Yet it is not quite accurate to say “on the day fixed,” for a little accident occurred that made postponement necessary. The balloon had been ready sooner than the aeronauts, who thought they could keep it waiting, held by its ropes to stakes. But these stakes had been driven into the recently disturbed, and consequently loose, ground of the Luxembourg gardens. Heavy rain the day before, or during the night, had soaked the soil, so that the stakes could not withstand the balloon’s lifting force. On arriving, the aeronauts were greatly surprised to see it in the air and many people busy bringing back the fugitive, whose leading strings had most fortunately been seized. It was decided to put it in a more suitable place and postpone the ascent to another day. It took place in the garden of the Conservatory of Arts, in very favorable weather: beautiful, majestic and without the slightest accident.

[C19-32 | source PDF 113–114]
From these facts and this chain of circumstances, my readers will doubtless have judged it at least probable that my memoir and the report whose printing the Galvanic Society ordered were the immediate occasion for the ascent of Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac. This probability becomes certainty when one reads M. Biot’s account of that balloon journey, read to the Class of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the National Institute on 9 Fructidor and published in the Moniteur of the 12th (August 30, 1804). It plainly shows that the experiments made during my ascent from Hamburg were those the two Paris aeronauts proposed to verify. The results were not the same, which will not surprise anyone who knows that a man may be very learned in the theory of physical science and very ill fitted to perform experiments, without which theory is nevertheless vain, since it can be securely founded only on well-established facts. M. Brisson had often furnished proof of this, and M. Biot himself has supplied a few examples, including the following incident, which I remember perfectly.

[C19-33 | source PDF 114–115]
M. Pictet of Geneva, a corresponding associate of the Institute, had read at one of the Class of Sciences’ meetings a letter from M. Molet, professor of physics at Lyon. He reported that, having learned from a gunsmith that strongly compressing air in a gun barrel had set fire to the rag stopping its touchhole, he had had the experiment repeated, and the stated effect had been consistently obtained. This fact was new to the physicists of the class. M. Biot was charged with repeating the experiment, for it was a rule among these gentlemen that nothing should be true unless one of them had recognized it as such. I do not know how the experimenter went about it, but the experiment failed, and it was decided that Professor Molet had deceived himself. This did not prevent new lighters from being sold on the Pont-Neuf shortly after that decision. They were called fire pistons because they lit tinder by the compression of air alone.

[C19-34 | source PDF 115–115]
It is not part of the plan of my Memoirs to enter into scientific discussions to investigate how the same experiments, performed by M. Lhoëst and myself at Hamburg, repeated by M. Sacharof at Saint Petersburg and by Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac in Paris, produced the same results in the first two places but not in the third. I shall confine myself to placing before readers interested in these questions a few passages from M. Biot’s account alongside corresponding passages from the report made to the Galvanic Society on the memoir I had sent it.

[C19-35 | source PDF 116–116]
Account of Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac

[C19-36 | source PDF 116–117]
“We observed our animals at every height; they did not seem to suffer in any way. As for ourselves, we experienced no effect other than the acceleration of the pulse I have already mentioned. At a height of 3,400 meters we released a small bird called a greenfinch. It flew off at once, but returned almost immediately to perch on our ropes. Then, taking flight again, it plunged toward the earth along a winding course not far from the vertical. We followed it with our eyes into the clouds, where we lost sight of it. But a pigeon released in the same way at the same height offered us a more curious spectacle. Set free on the edge of the basket, it remained there a few moments as though measuring the distance it had to travel. Then it launched itself into an uneven, fluttering flight, as if trying its wings. After a few beats, however, it merely spread them fully and began descending toward the clouds in great circles, like all birds of prey. Its descent was rapid but controlled. It soon entered the clouds, and we could still see it below them.”

[C19-37 | source PDF 117–117]
As for the travelers themselves, this is how they describe their situation at a height of 2,724 meters, according to their estimate:

[C19-38 | source PDF 117–117]
“At about this height we observed the animals we had brought. They did not seem to suffer from the thinness of the air, although the barometer stood at 20 inches 8 lines, giving a height of 2,622 meters. A violet ébulle that we released flew away very quickly. The thermometer showed 13 degrees on the centigrade scale (104 Réaumur). We were very surprised not to feel cold; on the contrary, the sun warmed us strongly. We had taken off the gloves we had put on at first, and they proved of no use to us. Our pulses were much accelerated: M. Gay-Lussac’s, which ordinarily beats 62 times a minute, was beating 80; mine, ordinarily 79, was beating 111. The increase was therefore felt by both of us in approximately the same proportion. Yet our breathing was not at all impeded, we felt no discomfort, and our situation seemed extremely pleasant.”

[C19-39 | source PDF 118–118]
Report to the Galvanic Society

[C19-40 | source PDF 118–119]
“We have long known that an animal cannot pass unharmed from air to which it is accustomed into much denser or much thinner air. In the first case it suffers from the force of the surrounding air, which presses upon it excessively; in the second, the liquids or elastic fluids forming part of its system, being under less pressure than they should be, expand and act against their enclosing membranes. In either case the effects are approximately the same: anxiety, general discomfort, ringing in the ears and often hemorrhages. The diving-bell experiment had long indicated what would happen to aeronauts. Our colleague and his traveling companion experienced these effects with great intensity: their lips were swollen, their eyes bloodshot; their rounded veins stood out on their hands, and, most remarkably, both retained a dark, reddish complexion that astonished those who had seen them before their ascent. This distension of the vessels in their smallest branches must necessarily produce difficulty and constraint in every muscular movement. It is chiefly to this cause, I believe, that we must attribute our colleague’s vain efforts to swallow the bread his companion offered him while they were still at a height indicated by 12 inches on the barometer.”

[C19-41 | source PDF 119–120]
No one will deny that everything the author of the report says here rests on the least disputed principles of science. I do not believe there is a professor of physics and physiology who has not spoken to his listeners of the weight of the column of air corresponding to the surface of a man’s body, and demonstrated that this enormous weight is rendered imperceptible to the body by the equilibrium established between the pressure of the external air and the reaction of the elastic fluids forming part of its internal system. Every one of them has demonstrated what the effects of disturbing this equilibrium must be. Experiments on the subject have been varied in so many ways that this principle is no less evident than that of water rising in pump cylinders or mercury in a barometer through air pressure; and I do not think M. Biot has changed all that. We cannot therefore refuse to conclude that the effects experienced by M. Lhoëst and myself, and afterward by M. Sacharof, are entirely rational and consistent with the laws of nature, whereas those experienced by Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac depart from those laws so far as to require explanation. Now the only admissible explanation is that these aeronauts did not rise high enough, or else rose so slowly that their equilibrium was not disturbed. Otherwise one cannot see what could have spared them the effects that inevitably follow.

[C19-42 | source PDF 120–120]
Account of M. Biot

[C19-43 | source PDF 120–121]
“We had not yet tested the electricity of the air, because observing the compass, which was the most important task, had absorbed almost all our attention. Besides, we had always had clouds below us, and clouds are known to be variously electrified. We did not then have the means necessary to calculate their distance from the barometer’s height, and did not know how far they might influence us. Nevertheless, to test our apparatus at least, we stretched out a metal wire 80 meters long (240 feet), and, after insulating it from ourselves, took electricity from its upper end and carried it to the electrometer: it proved resinous. We repeated this observation twice at the same time: first by destroying the atmospheric electricity through the influence of the vitreous electricity of the electrophorus; second by destroying the vitreous electricity drawn from the electrophorus by means of atmospheric electricity. In this way we were able to establish that the latter was resinous. This experiment indicates electricity increasing with height, a result consistent with what had already been concluded from theory.”

[C19-44 | source PDF 121–121]
Report to the Galvanic Society

[C19-45 | source PDF 121–122]
“Of all the observations our colleague has communicated to us, none, in my opinion, is more important than those I have yet to discuss, concerning electricity. They tend to correct what has seemed to me a general error on a question that has occupied physicists for some time: I mean the stony and metallic masses known to have fallen from the atmosphere. Very few of those who have written on this phenomenon have failed to invoke electricity to explain the luminous effects and detonations that invariably precede the fall of these bodies.

[C19-46 | source PDF 122–122]
“Examining these various explanations in my Atmospheric Lithology, I said on page 375: electrical explosions can occur only when the accumulated fluid is forced to make its way through an insulating elastic medium, passing from a particular reservoir (an insulated, charged conductor) to a discharger presented at a suitable distance. The discharger must also communicate with the common reservoir, or with a surface deprived of electricity.

[C19-47 | source PDF 122–122]
“Accordingly,” I added, “physicists who, with Chladni, bring these metallic masses from beyond the atmosphere must admit that they are scattered there and mixed with atmospheric air. In the latter case there is no explosion, because the fluid, thus dispersed, has no barriers to break through; in the other case there is none either, because the metallic mass can be considered only as a perfectly insulated discharger, and is consequently very ill suited to producing an electrical discharge.

[C19-48 | source PDF 122–123]
“We know that every idio-electric body gives electricity when rubbed. From this it has been concluded that these metallic masses, rubbing against the air, must electrify it and themselves become charged with that electricity. But a substance, however idio-electric it may be, even glass itself, gives electricity through friction only when it is made to communicate with the common reservoir; otherwise one would rub it in vain. Now the layers of air through which the metallic mass travels in the upper regions are, I think, too well insulated for friction to produce its usual effect.

[C19-49 | source PDF 123–124]
“Our colleague’s experiments fully confirm these assertions, which I advanced only after a thorough examination of the behavior of the electrical fluid under the various means we have of setting it in action. ‘At this height,’ he says, ‘glass, sulfur and sealing wax do not become appreciably electrified by friction; at least I was unable to collect any of this electricity on conductors or on the electrometer.’ This physicist soon recognized why friction was ineffectual, considering that both the body rubbed and the body rubbing it were insulated. The experiment to which this observation led him tells us more than we could learn in our laboratories.”

[C19-50 | source PDF 124–125]
I leave those of my readers who have made a special study of electrical phenomena to compare this section of the report with the corresponding section of the account. I leave them to form, if they can, a clear idea of all this commotion over electricity “taken from the end of a metal wire perfectly insulated in the atmosphere,” which, “carried to the electrometer, proves resinous”; over “the destruction of atmospheric electricity through the influence of the vitreous electricity of the electrophorus”; and finally over “the destruction of the vitreous electricity drawn from the electrophorus by means of atmospheric electricity.” All this to conclude that the experiment indicates electricity increasing with height: “a result consistent,” he adds, “with what had already been concluded from theory!” What theory? Probably that of the members of the class, but certainly not that of so many other distinguished physicists who have made a special study of these matters, and still less that of the author of the report, who had already won the prize for this question proposed by Bénédict Prévôt of Geneva: “What use can be made of chemical affinities in a theory of electricity?”

[C19-51 | source PDF 125–125]
In quoting this passage from M. Biot’s account, my first intention was to establish that the Institute’s learned men were still clinging to the antiquated notion of vitreous and resinous electricity, which so many physicists had already disposed of at that time, and to add this proof to so many others that these men, whose mission was to advance science, are much more disposed to keep it stationary. This arises solely from the defects of the institution. Everything suggests that M. Biot used this language only because he found himself obliged to swear in verba magistri.

[C19-52 | source PDF 125–125]
I shall go no further into science considered in itself, and return to my first purpose: to show what is made of it by the learned men to whom the government has so thoughtlessly granted its monopoly.

[C19-53 | source PDF 125–126]
“Our principal aim,” said M. Biot in his account read to the Institute, “was to examine whether the magnetic property undergoes any appreciable diminution as one moves away from the earth. Saussure, following experiments at the Col du Géant, at a height of 3,434 meters, had believed he detected a very appreciable weakening, which he estimated at one-fifth. Some physicists had even announced that this property disappears entirely when one moves away from the earth in a balloon.”

[C19-54 | source PDF 126–127]
If you want to know who these physicists are, look for their names among those you know to have ascended in a balloon. They are not Montgolfier, Charles or Pilâtre Durosier: none concerned himself with the experiment in question. Could it be M. Garnerin? He has gone up in a balloon often enough. Everyone knows how he fleeced the learned professor from Berlin, but no one has said that he occupied himself during his ascents with scientific experiments and research. The same is true of M. and Madame Blanchard; it being understood that I place them on a level with M. Garnerin only as aeronauts, and in no way in respect of his conduct toward M. Hermbstaedt. There remain, then, only M. Lhoëst and myself, and afterward M. Sacharoff, to whom M. Biot’s words about those “some physicists” whose experiments he wished to verify can apply. But why put his readers to the trouble of searching for their names? He did name M. Saussure, who had erred more than we had; for, making his experiments on solid ground, he positively announced a weakening of the magnetic property and even estimated it at one-fifth for the height of the Col du Géant. We, on the other hand, observing from a very unsteady and insecure position, confined ourselves to stating conscientiously what we had seen: that the oscillations increased as we rose; that they slowed as we approached the earth; and that on arrival the needle had returned to the point where it stood at departure. M. Biot’s own experiment proved that this was what should happen, by demonstrating the cause of all these movements of the magnetic needle.

[C19-55 | source PDF 127–127]
M. Biot knew the names of these “some physicists” perfectly well. Mine was no more unknown to him than my person, for he attended M. Charles’s courses at the same time as I did; and, as we saw in the first volume of these Memoirs, page 256, he had come to fetch me to perform galvanic experiments at the Institute before the First Consul.

[C19-56 | source PDF 127–128]
It remains true nevertheless that my ascent and experiments preceded theirs by a year; that if Messrs. Laplace and Berthollet had not taken earlier advantage of the excellent opportunity offered by M. Chaptal’s ministry, it was because the idea had not occurred to them; and that it occurred to them only after publication of the report made to the Galvanic Society on the memoir I had sent it.

[C19-57 | source PDF 128–128]
I had also sent this memoir to the Institute. M. Reinhart, ambassador at Hamburg and, I believe, a corresponding member of that body, had been charged with reporting on it. On this occasion the celebrated Lalande wrote to me in these terms:

[C19-58 | source PDF 128–128]
To Professor Robertson

[C19-59 | source PDF 128–128]
“I have read with keen interest, my dear fellow scholar, the report you had delivered to me by our member, M. Reinhart. If you are the first aeronaut to seek to make useful journeys that are costly and not without danger, you also have the glory of having risen to a height no mortal has yet reached.

[C19-60 | source PDF 128–128]
“I admire you, but there is no way to imitate you.

[C19-61 | source PDF 128–129]
“There are a few imperfections in your report, doubtless arising from the indisposition you experienced at that height and connected with the many demands that follow such an undertaking, or caused by the copyist’s mistakes.

[C19-62 | source PDF 129–129]
“In future you will need to repeat your experiments with the dipping needle more carefully, for I see that you have some doubts about the instrument you used, and especially about the imperceptible movement that may occur at the place of observation.

[C19-63 | source PDF 129–129]
“At one time I wished to make an ascent like yours, but Blanchard gave me poor support in this plan.

[C19-64 | source PDF 129–129]
“Accept, my dear colleague, etc.

[C19-65 | source PDF 129–129]
“Lalande.”

[C19-66 | source PDF 129–130]
Yet M. Biot has printed in his Treatise on Physics, and never fails to repeat in his courses at the Collège de France, that M. Gay-Lussac rose to the greatest height ever reached by man. False as this assertion is, it gains credit among the young because I have no one who can tell a few hundred listeners each year that more than a year before M. Gay-Lussac’s ascent I had risen to 3,630 toises. The time will soon come when no one will know or remember that before the ascent of Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac I had made a similar one, like theirs in the interests of science, but during which the air of those high regions proved far less hospitable to me than to these gentlemen.

[Original illustration: chapter-nineteen-tailpiece.png]
Original signed tailpiece: a winged figure with trumpet above a balloon, Volume II, p.118.

Original notes

[C19-N1 | source PDF 110–110]
The author of the report was not mistaken if he meant to express my love of discovery and my zeal for the progress of physics. Only in this sense would I dare to interpret his judgment.

Editorial record

The source’s argument about balloon equilibrium and its rejection of Land’s proposal are retained as Robertson’s historical account. The printed phrase excédant de lest is translated as surplus of ballast, without silently substituting lift. The opening synopsis’s German madchen is rendered girls.

PDF100 clearly prints departure at12:42; OCR garbles42. The next observation is12:51. Historical inches, lines, feet, leagues and temperatures are retained. No temperature scale is added where this passage does not name one. The instrument passage really says four inches of air and to within one-tenth, without a further unit.

The source alternates Reimarus and Reymarus; English retains these forms at their respective occurrences pending whole-book name reconciliation. Rheitre, Hetz, Schuthz and D’Hachenhole likewise follow the printed text. The reported oxygen, magnetic, optical and lightning-protection claims are Robertson’s historical assertions.

Gascon rapiers translates the mocking flamberges de gascons. The garden passage’s allusive connection with the maidservants’ free hour and parties is retained without making the insinuation more explicit than the source.

Original page references65 and16 are retained as source pagination; the latter refers to Coutelle’s account in Volume II Chapter I. The Volume I page256 reference points to the galvanic demonstration in Chapter X. Titles of the two scientific books are translated; the unnamed rapporteur remains unnamed.

PDF117 prints Ébulle violette; the uncertain noun is retained as ébulle rather than silently substituted. The same page prints104 Réaumur opposite13 centigrade, with no visible decimal mark. English retains104;13 centigrade would convert to10.4 Réaumur. The framing altitude2724meters and quoted2622meters both remain. Pulse readings62,80,79,111 are image-verified.

The dates4Pluviôse YearXII /25January1804 and12Fructidor /30August1804 follow the printed pairings. No calendar correction is silently made. The wire length80meters /240feet and final altitude3630toises likewise retain source figures; the latter differs from3679toises in the preceding chapter.

The meteorite passage on printed110 shifts from metallic masses to electrical fluid and refers to two cases without clearly setting out both alternatives. This textual difficulty is preserved. Idio-electric, common reservoir, discharger, vitreous and resinous electricity are historical terms in the quoted argument, not endorsements of its correctness.

In verba magistri means on the master’s word: the Latin phrase is retained in the text. The source prints Pilâtre Durosier and alternates Sacharof/Sacharoff; those forms remain in the comparison and at the corresponding English occurrences. Lalande’s entire letter, including reservations about the instrument and motion of the observation platform, is retained.

English quotation marks clarify the opening report excerpt’s transition back to Robertson’s narration where the original does not print a closing guillemet after Pilâtre. Running quotation marks repeated at line beginnings are retained in the French comparison; English uses paragraph quotations. No text is omitted.

Volume II, Chapter IV

Paul I and the transformation of beasts. Laffecteur’s Rob and the Cross of Saint Anne. Sailing on ice. The city of a century. Death of Paul I. The autocrat and the republican. The grand duke and the actor. Paul I bareheaded. The tsar’s loves. Bonaparte’s seraglio. The streets of Paris and Saint Petersburg. Enamels of Henry II. The painter Caraffe. The First Consul without a head. M. Lovitz and filtered water. An ascent with M. Sacharoff.

[C20-01 | source PDF 131–132]
The reader may think I progress rather slowly on my travels, and after the fairly serious dissertation that the end of the preceding chapter made him endure, he will be no less impatient than I am to embark for the city of Peter I. But what is this? That very name will detain me a few moments longer in Hamburg. It was there, indeed, that Peter I saw a spectacle that keenly excited his curiosity: a veritable Proteus, now with a human head, now with that of a calf, a lion, a tiger or a bear. An entire menagerie passed across a man’s shoulders. The tsar was intrigued; he wanted to guess the secret and lost patience. An autocrat’s desire scarcely bargains. The apprentice of Saardam cut the Gordian knot in his own fashion: he rushed at the partition, kicked a breach in it and caught the wild boar just as it was turning into a wolf. I wish to let my readers share this last pleasure of His Russian Majesty and, should they fancy putting the transformation of beasts into practice, give them the means.

[C20-02 | source PDF 132–133]
Suppose an ordinary person, of any appearance, wishes to change into whatever animal is named from a list settled in advance. The chamber where the marvel is to take place is about eight feet square. See Figure 5, page 121. The necromancer admits the spectator, who finds absolutely nothing there but a chair placed against the wall. The partition opposite this chair is pierced at eye level by a small slit three and three-quarter inches long and about four lines wide. On its inner face, a slide runs in grooves before this slit; the slide itself has two further slits, each four and a half inches long. One simply carries a flat pane of glass, the other a flint-glass prism. Where the prism is fitted, the slide is hollowed out to the shape of the equilateral prism, each face of which is thirteen lines high. This optical arrangement is easily recognized in Figure 6 below, page 124, drawn at half the size the prism, slit and slide should have.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-fig-5.png]
Figure 5. Original illustration of the room used for the transformation illusion, Volume II, p.121.

[C20-03 | source PDF 133–133]
In this position the prism inverts the entire room, putting the floor at the ceiling or the ceiling on the floor, so that a chair whose four feet touch the ceiling appears upright on the floor. The operator has two perfectly identical chairs with movable seats that can be removed and replaced with the greatest ease, and, besides these, eight, ten or twelve seats for the same chair.

[C20-04 | source PDF 133–134]
The spectators have examined the room and are waiting outside, each with an eye to a slide and the empty chair before them. The operator sits down and asks them to say: “Turn yourself into a weasel, a squirrel, a cat, a stork, an owl, a monkey or a fox,” and so on. He has, of course, taken care to announce which transformations he can undergo when they are called for in the stated order, for example the one I have just given, and he tells the audience to watch closely, for the transformation is about to take place. Through a trapdoor in the ceiling, which the paintwork must skillfully conceal, a weasel already positioned on one of the chair’s removable seats has been set on that chair. At the moment the operator cries, “Here I am, a weasel!” an assistant pulls a thread, bringing the prism into place instead of the flat glass. By this movement the spectators’ gaze leaves the floor without their knowing it and is suddenly directed toward the ceiling. Consequently the operator disappears, and only the requested animal becomes visible in the place he occupied. At a command, the flat glass restores the original arrangement, and the scenes thus follow one another at will.

[C20-05 | source PDF 134–135]
Do you wish only the head to change, with the man’s torso supporting a succession of more or less bizarre heads? Ingenuity readily finds a way to satisfy this wish: all that is needed is a headless mannequin dressed like the operator, its neck arranged to take several different heads. Do you require the magician to disappear altogether? Nothing could be simpler. He stays where he is while the prism shows the empty chair on the ceiling, and assures the spectators, quite truthfully, that their eyes must be bewitched, that he is still in the same place and that his supposed invisibility will cease that very instant. This happens, as will doubtless be readily understood, when the flat glass is substituted for the prism.

[C20-06 | source PDF 135–136]
A few more observations are needed to ensure the success of this very agreeable experiment, entirely novel to present. Care must be taken, for example, that the slits in the partition do not reveal the tips of the chair’s legs; otherwise the floor would be seen without the prism while the prism showed the ceiling. Only half the room’s height should be visible through the slit, or the upper part of the inverted figure might be seen. Finally, it is plainly necessary to make every part of the room perfectly uniform, of the same color and without paneling. A door or window not concealed by a curtain falling from ceiling to floor would suffice to reveal the secret, for the prism would invert it before the eye. With a large room, the experiment could be performed with several prisms, engaging several spectators at once. To leave nothing wanting, here is a precise explanation of the different parts of Figures 5, 6 and 7:

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-figs-6-7.png]
Figures 6 and 7. Original prism, slide and viewing-slit diagrams, Volume II, p.124. The original figure lettering is retained; the key follows below.

[C20-07 | source PDF 136–136]
AA. The partition, Figure 6.

[C20-08 | source PDF 136–136]
BB. The slide.

[C20-09 | source PDF 136–136]
C. Slit in the partition, on the spectator’s side.

[C20-10 | source PDF 136–136]
D. Slit in the slide for the prism.

[C20-11 | source PDF 136–136]
F. The prism.

[C20-12 | source PDF 136–136]
GG. The grooves for the slide.

[C20-13 | source PDF 136–136]
H. Flat glass, Figure 7.

[C20-14 | source PDF 136–136]
K. Slit in the partition; it is drawn here at its intended size.

[C20-15 | source PDF 137–137]
The details of this optical illusion, which the name and adventure of Peter the Great gave me an opportunity to insert here, have detained me a few moments longer in Hamburg. I finally leave the city after a stay of a year, having exerted little attraction on the coins of this free city, but at least leaving memories to recommend my name and taking with me the hope of success that the brilliance of my first balloon ascents entitled me to anticipate.

[C20-16 | source PDF 137–138]
The crossing from Lübeck, where I embarked for Saint Petersburg, took twelve days. I have nothing to say here of the Baltic Sea, which I found peaceful and which I shall later have occasion to depict in anger; but I shall say a few words about a passenger who, later too, became angry with me. He was a French physician aboard the same ship, going to seek his fortune in Russia, then a good country for foreigners. He came from Lorraine and was named Bigel. He had a very high opinion of his talent, and in this respect was without rival. For a long time his medical resources therefore yielded only scant financial resources, and he found himself reduced to vegetating in Saint Petersburg, until he thought of using M. Laffecteur’s Rob. The Russians, very ignorant of the treatment of the diseases for which this liquor was intended, were astonished by its effect on a few patients. Before long an entire hospital was entrusted to Dr. Bigel; and since great cities always offer a vast field for experiments of this kind, the doctor one day found his buttonhole adorned with a large Cross of Saint Anne and accumulated an income of 15,000 livres a year, thanks to Columbus, who discovered the home of a disease unknown in Europe, and to M. Laffecteur, who invented its remedy. I must add that, from his arrival, he had divined the Russian spirit and the value these people set on grand display. Thus this same compatriot, to whom I had had the pleasure of offering, aboard the ship itself, the price of the visits that future ailments might one day oblige me to request, I met shortly after we landed wrapped in a great black-bear pelisse and drawn by two handsome-necked horses in an elegant sleigh. How much of its subsequent efficacy the Rob must have owed to that rich fur!

[C20-17 | source PDF 138–139]
M. Bigel was therefore an accoucheur before becoming a seller of Rob. I do not know what it cost my family to bring me into the world; certainly it must have been much less than I would have been compelled to pay to bring my second son into the light had M. Bigel obtained from the judge the hundred rubles he demanded for attending a delivery. Yet I had offered him a fee above the customary charge for such services. Fortunately Peter I, who had subjected almost every act of life in his dominions, whether pleasure or necessity, to a precise tariff, had decided that a man who helped his fellow creature see the light should receive only a fixed number of kopecks, and M. Bigel did not win his case. Regulations of this kind, however strange they may seem to our customs, are no less wise for that; and it was to have occasion to recall them that I remembered this Aesculapius from Lorraine.

[C20-18 | source PDF 139–140]
We had sailed from Travemünde, near Lübeck; the crossing to Kronstadt lasted only eleven days. Had it taken longer, or had contrary winds delayed us by only a week, we might have been reduced to an enforced fast on a ship truly devoid of every comfort, aboard which we were obliged to provide our own food. But the winds favored us, and the ship advanced rapidly.

[C20-19 | source PDF 140–140]
This swift, brisk progress, through the stronger movement it imparted to the air, gave me occasion to notice that each day we were advancing into a climate whose harshness became more perceptible, although it was then the height of summer. I do not hesitate to affirm that this gradual change in the atmosphere cannot escape an attentive traveler. Besides, the Baltic is the most dangerous of all Europe’s seas. Shipwrecks are frequent there, and the narrowness between its shores makes its storms terrible. One could almost navigate it without a compass, so many natural means of finding their bearings are offered to sailors by the lighthouses, islands and successive coasts of Sweden, Finland and Russia.

[C20-20 | source PDF 140–141]
We landed first at Kronstadt, for Kronstadt is where one must first land: Russian police regulations oblige you to do so. At least that was the case at the time I am speaking of, nearly thirty years ago. I take this opportunity to warn my readers that, in anything I may say about the manners or customs of this country, I shall not try to make it agree with present-day practices in the same empire. On the contrary, I aim to depict what was, as a point of comparison with what may be now. It is difficult, indeed, to believe that the great movement of civilization, which has accelerated so much in the last fifteen years, stopped at the frontiers of old Muscovy, when the aim of every sovereign since Peter the Great seems to have been to introduce it into their dominions.

[C20-21 | source PDF 141–142]
One was therefore obliged to remain in Kronstadt and appear before the commandant of the fortress. The two or three days one had to spend there before obtaining permission to continue to the capital were probably used by the authorities to gather information about the travelers, their purpose in coming to Russia and, perhaps in doubtful cases, to receive orders from Saint Petersburg. Ships from every part of the globe arrive in this island’s harbor. It lies only seven leagues from Saint Petersburg, and this stretch, so lively when boats crowd it to carry travelers, presents a no less picturesque spectacle in winter, when it becomes nothing but a road of ice. During our three days of quarantine, as I may call them, I was indeed given details of a singular kind of navigation that I later saw in full activity. Everyone knows that Peter the Great, who created everything in his nation and even made it a new nation, created the Russian navy. Such was his zeal to have good sailors that he wanted them as tireless as himself, and even winter was to give them no respite. Thus, while Russian lords and grandees go to Kronstadt by sleigh, the sailors continue to go in vessels fitted with runners. The wind fills the sails handled by the crew, and such is the speed of this mechanical navigation, with no assistance beyond the means I have described and a rudder likewise fitted with an iron runner, that the seven leagues are ordinarily covered in an hour. The boats used for this ingenious exercise are called Bouers.

[C20-22 | source PDF 142–143]
After three days at Kronstadt, I was issued permission to proceed to Saint Petersburg. The journey is usually made in a large launch with eight rowers, whose uniform dress consists of a short shirt drawn in at the waist by a red woolen sash. These rowers customarily relieve the tedium of the crossing with national songs unlike any familiar tunes. Their rhythm is altogether strange, more plaintive than cheerful, yet not without a certain charm for the traveler’s ear.

[C20-23 | source PDF 143–144]
As I approached the shore, now not far away although I had as yet seen nothing, a sort of phenomenon seemed to unfold before my eyes. An immense city appeared to emerge from the ground and rise to sea level without exceeding it; this is what prevents it from being seen at a distance. The foundations of the city are indeed low, leaving it exposed to periodic floods at every exceptionally high tide. Every half century the sea threatens to submerge it entirely, and may be preparing an inevitable catastrophe for it at some more or less distant time. No effort has been spared to find every means of remedying so serious a disadvantage, but ingenuity would exhaust its resources here. Architecture will always remain powerless against the levelness of terrain that presents the same horizontal surface over more than a hundred and fifty leagues. Only the sea could have swept and leveled so great an expanse. I know of only one elevation there of any real significance: that formed by the Moskva beyond Moscow and called the Sparrow Hills. I judge that it was produced by the bend of this river, for which it serves as a point of support in changing its course at this spot.

[C20-24 | source PDF 144–146]
As I approached the shore, I gave myself up to reflections that must surely arise in the mind of any traveler with some knowledge of Russian history. Confronted by his work, how could one fail to admire the genius of a man who one day conceived the idea of building a city at the head of the Gulf of Finland, as he had built ships in the yards of Saardam, and succeeded? And this city was to become the center of political activity and life in the largest state in Europe! I pictured the lifeless appearance of the shore a hundred years earlier, for Saint Petersburg was begun in 1703, and it was in 1803 that I was about to land there. It struck me as remarkable to stand before such a work after precisely a century, year for year, and to think that, had Peter the Great not brought his country into communication with the rest of Europe and made it a promised land for the arts and sciences of the south, I should certainly never have known the banks of the Neva. My very arrival was a sign that the seeds this mighty sower had gathered in that northern country were bearing fruit. How far, indeed, had manners traveled from those that obliged him to have beards and coats cut at the city gates, when I could bring there the most delicate and newest combinations of physics and chemistry, two sciences of which one had scarcely, so to speak, been born in our country, and in bringing them base almost certain hopes of fortune upon my success! To confront Scythians with the phenomena of light and electricity was a marvel of civilization’s progress. Well, I gladly declare it now: in my many travels I have found no nation more eager to learn than the Russian nation. That it will produce a great number of profound minds, that one day it will be able to point to scholars of the kind who are the pride of Germany and England, and whom French lightness has not excluded from our own soil, because it belongs more to our temperament than to our intellect, I do not believe. I do not even think this nation especially suited to very sustained study. It seems to me frivolous and inattentive; but it likes the approaches to science, delights in knowing a little of everything, skimming every subject, adorning itself with what it knows and persuading itself that it knows everything about anything of which it knows something. Raise any question before one of these half-learned men and begin developing your argument: he stops you short and drives you to despair with words he will repeat twenty times if the conversation continues: “is naye, I know.” That is a peremptory answer.

[C20-25 | source PDF 146–147]
In Saint Petersburg the foreigner admires a city of novel appearance, built on a grand plan and laid out on generously allotted ground. One does not find, as in our France, a population crowded together and piled one above another at every step. Each house is not, as in Paris, a Noah’s ark containing families of every class and reaching to the sky. The people, less lively in their movements than Parisians, walk more quietly, have a gentler character and as a whole make less noise. Their dress, long beards and caps make them seem a distinct tribe among European peoples. What first strikes one in the general bustle is the great number of carriages. Every nobleman, and the nobility is numerous, attaches a kind of shame to being obliged to go on foot and would consider himself disgraced if seen walking through the streets of Saint Petersburg. A carriage is also a powerful means of gaining consideration for a foreigner or an artist; indeed, it is indispensable. I therefore observed this law of etiquette as faithfully as most of the estimable Frenchmen I had occasion to know in that country.

[C20-26 | source PDF 147–148]
At the time of my arrival, there was much talk of the very recent death of Paul I. Everyone knows that the violent catastrophe that ended this emperor’s life, after a reign of five years, took place on March 23 in the first year of the present century. That was two years before I left for Russia. The details of his death, far less well known than today and not yet clarified by several revelations, prompted countless conversations and conjectures among friends. Since then, people have believed they recognized the English hand that prepared this criminal plot; and today, in the judgments of history, no doubt remains that the influence of the French, and especially of Bonaparte, over Paul I’s mind, and the bonds of friendship that seemed likely to form between the two peoples to Great Britain’s disadvantage, were the true motives of the instigators of the conspiracy. It is said that the scarf that strangled Paul I was woven of English threads and served Russian barbarity as a noose.

[C20-27 | source PDF 148–148]
M. Balachoff, at whose house in Moscow I was dining one day, told me that at the time of Paul’s assassination he was governor of Revel. A few days before the event, Nelson, stationed in the Gulf of Finland, had come to ask for breakfast and requested permission to visit the harbor, which could not be granted. When M. Balachoff asked whether he would remain long in those waters, Nelson had given him to understand, in very vague terms, that he was awaiting an event. The admiral sailed away the day after Paul lost his life.

[C20-28 | source PDF 148–149]
Long beforehand, Paul had had a presentiment of the fate awaiting him, or rather had considered the end a Russian sovereign might fear at the hands of a people still so barbarous. The immense imperial palace no longer seemed a sufficiently secure dwelling. He wished to have Saint Michael’s Palace built, and the construction of this edifice revealed less the taste of a prince who wanted magnificent lodgings than the fear of a despot seeking fortifications. This palace, near the Summer Garden, resembles, if not a prison, at least a fortress. It is surrounded by water-filled moats and accessible only by drawbridges. Sunlight scarcely penetrates its very narrow windows, and its approaches are guarded like those of a fort under siege. Despite all these precautions, it was in this self-imposed Bastille that assassination confirmed his sinister forebodings.

[C20-29 | source PDF 149–150]
It is quite true that Paul, so hostile to the French Revolution when he sent his armies under Suvorov and Kutuzov against us, so far from his frozen climate, had undergone a reversal and developed a great predilection for the French. A very witty sovereign himself, he loved our nation’s wit and greatly favored our artists. He had detested the principles of our Revolution, yet had nonetheless conceived an idea of the dignity it was to restore to men. Here is an example. During his reign a Parisian actor came to Saint Petersburg who became well known in Russia for the extraordinary favor, carried to an unusual extreme, that he enjoyed with the two sovereigns Paul and Alexander and with Grand Duke Constantine. The emperor had been favorably disposed in advance toward M. Frogère, the actor in question. When admitted to his first audience, he thought himself obliged to observe the custom without which no one was allowed to appear before the autocrat: kneeling upon entering. But Paul at once told him to rise and said, “What, Monsieur Frogère! You come from Paris, and you kneel before a man!” He then asked about all sorts of particulars concerning the capital of a free country, took a liking to the actor, and never saw him afterward without greeting him with this republican formula: “There you are, Citizen Frogère? Well, greetings and fraternity!”

[C20-30 | source PDF 150–151]
M. Frogère had been an actor at the Théâtre-Français and a rival of Dazincourt, whose pranks and witty sayings are well known. Possessing a very quick wit, a well-stocked memory and a very cheerful disposition, M. Frogère excelled above all at making fools of people who did not know him, and sometimes even of his intimates. I shall give a few examples, one of which concerns me personally. After my first ascent in Saint Petersburg, the manager of the imperial theater thought he noticed, on his way to rehearsal, that the Admiralty steeple had lost its gilding. This illusion was caused by the morning mist. He met M. Frogère and told him what he had observed. “You were not mistaken,” the latter immediately replied with the most sincere air in the world. “Why, do you not know that our compatriot Robertson is behind bars? The unfortunate man has committed a theft no one could ever have expected: he used his balloon to strip the gilding from the steeple. It is a cruel misfortune for his family.” The manager, with whom I was very friendly, hurried to my house to console my wife and offer his services. One can imagine his confusion when I opened the door myself.

[C20-31 | source PDF 151–152]
The amusing tricks M. Frogère allowed himself to play on Grand Duke Constantine, and which the prince permitted, reserving the right to retaliate, show the extent of the favor he enjoyed. One day the grand duke was walking along the Petrowski road when a poor woman timidly approached and asked for alms. He turned to an officer in his suite and told him to give her a gold coin. That evening, in a court drawing room, the grand duke saw this old woman in her beggar’s clothes and abruptly asked how she had got in and what she had come to do. “Your Highness,” the old woman replied, “I was afraid you might be deceived. The officer you ordered to give me alms will doubtless charge you for a gold coin, but he gave me only a silver one.” “Is this woman telling the truth?” Constantine asked, turning to the officer. The latter answered that the old woman was lying and appealed to M. Frogère as a witness. “But M. Frogère was not with us,” the duke replied, “and he is not here.” “Forgive me, Your Highness,” the beggar said at once, “I can testify that the old woman has lied.” Recognizing M. Frogère in the old woman, the grand duke burst into uncontrollable laughter, joined by everyone around him.

[C20-32 | source PDF 152–154]
Prince and actor competed to see which could play the better trick on the other. At a grand dinner Constantine addressed M. Frogère, pointing to a Russian nobleman seated some distance away. “My dear Frogère,” he said, “here is M. Chouvalof, who understands not a single word of French and is very eager to study your language. I should be delighted if he became your pupil and you gave him lessons.” “Gladly, Your Highness,” replied M. Frogère. “Whatever pleases you pleases me at once.” “I must warn you of the difficulties, however, my poor Frogère. As I told you, M. Chouvalof does not understand a single word of French; and, besides, he is extremely thickheaded. Just look and see whether his features do not suggest an impregnable intelligence.” “I shall try to breach it.” “You can recognize a limited mind in that face, can you not, Frogère?” “Indeed, Your Highness.” Then the grand duke turned to M. Chouvalof. “Are you not very flattered, sir, by the fine opinion M. Frogère has just expressed of you?” “My only resource, Your Highness, is to suppose that M. Frogère is a very poor judge of faces.” At these words, spoken in good French, the grand duke could no longer contain himself and said to M. Frogère, amid the laughter of all the guests: “You have compromised yourself, my poor Frogère. Admit it: this time you have been fooled, thoroughly fooled!” “One of us has indeed,” M. Frogère replied. “I very much fear that Your Highness again has that advantage here; for I must confess that the name Chouvalof, which Your Royal Highness was pleased to give Count de N***, did not deceive me in the least. I have known the count for two years, and not long ago I spent two months with him on one of his estates.” This unexpected reversal caused great surprise and stopped the laughter; but the grand duke admitted that he had fallen into his own trap, found the adventure amusing, and the laughter broke out again.

[C20-33 | source PDF 154–154]
I must add that this familiarity, born of a similarity of temperament and gaiety, often proved more useful to unfortunate exiles than favor founded on far more serious claims could have done. More than one banished man returned from Siberia because M. Frogère undertook to press his petition and knew how to choose the favorable moment. More than one man in distress successfully entrusted his request to him and owed relief to his efforts. M. Frogère also liked to do justice to Constantine’s generous character and the eagerness with which he lavished gifts to remedy the misfortunes brought to his attention.[C20-N1]

[C20-34 | source PDF 155–156]
M. Frogère had made himself no less agreeable to Emperor Paul than to his sons. He particularly pleased him by imitating the recruiting agents on the Quai de la Ferraille and all the arts they used to entice recruits. He caught to perfection the picturesque quality of their bearing, gestures and speech. “Do the recruiter for us, my dear Frogère!” the emperor would call out in moments of gaiety. “But, Sire, it is impossible: my uniform is incomplete. There was never a recruiter without a cocked hat, and I see only one here.” “Take it, Frogère, and do the recruiter for us.” The hat belonged to the emperor himself. M. Frogère did not need to be told twice: he took the tsar’s hat and put it on his head. Afterward he often remarked, with much philosophy: “As you see me here, I have worn a sovereign’s headgear. Fortunately, it was not the crown.”

[C20-35 | source PDF 156–157]
It was part of the plan of the party opposed to Paul to make his yoke unbearable by inventing a host of petty annoyances and vexations that they induced him to decree. I do not know whether the custom of kneeling before the prince existed before his time; but one practice he had introduced, deeply offensive to every class with any enlightenment, was the obligation, whatever the weather and in every season, to stop bareheaded as the sovereign passed, even to leave one’s carriage and stand until the imperial coach had gone by. Women were not exempt from this duty, and gallantry had obtained no concession on this occasion for their shoes, their dress or the delicacy of their sex under so harsh a sky. Such a requirement seemed cruel to foreigners and affected Russians so deeply that I saw them resent his memory for it long after Paul’s death. I would say the same of the strange order forbidding anyone to pass the palace without uncovering his head, which was a worthy counterpart to the salute prescribed in Switzerland before Gessler’s cap. A word or an innocent action, misinterpreted, tore you from your family and country, and you went into the depths of Siberia to expiate, often for the rest of your life, the mistake of the most suspicious and imperious of monarchs. For perhaps the most fearsome feature of Paul’s character was the speed with which his words were put into effect.

[C20-36 | source PDF 157–158]
With such harsh manners, so despotic a character and a markedly ugly face, Paul could, at least so I was assured, become very agreeable when he wished; he must therefore have wished it very strongly. As for wit, I have said he had a great deal, and countless happy sayings were quoted that left no doubt on that score. All the women had eyes, if not for his person, at least for his power, and the prettiest competed for his attention. At the beginning of his passion for a certain Madame B***, he talked with her at length in the presence of the other ladies of his court, but far enough from the group not to be heard. When they parted, he followed her with his eyes as she went toward the ladies’ drawing room, where their faces betrayed unmistakable stirrings of envy. Then, calling her back, he said, “Do lift your dress: those ladies are going to tear you to pieces.”

[C20-37 | source PDF 158–158]
One of the women Paul loved longest and most ardently was Madame Chevalier, the leading actress at the Opéra-Comique. This lady was French, and her husband supplied the court’s wines. She was remarkably beautiful. The passion she inspired in the emperor was known throughout Europe. The sway she exercised over him may be judged from her daring one day to sit on a sofa between the two grand duchesses. Paul felt the full impropriety of the act and the affront it offered to his family’s dignity. He would not tolerate it; a coolness ensued between him and his imprudent mistress, which nevertheless did not prevent him from adoring her and heaping favors upon her as long as he lived. At his death she left the empire with immense riches. This exile of a favorite after a sovereign’s death was repeated a few years ago: when Alexander died, the beautiful Princess de Naviskin immediately withdrew and left the Russian Empire.[C20-N2]

[C20-38 | source PDF 159–159]
Such were Paul’s acknowledged love affairs; but he cultivated humbler ones, and perhaps happier ones. One day, in a courtyard of Saint Michael’s Palace, he noticed a very pretty young woman of the people and looked at her several times. A sovereign’s fancy entered his head, then love entered his heart. She was the daughter of one of his vassals. The poor child proved as weak before the tsar as a great lady. Soon the blood of the imperial line, mingled with the blood of the muzhiks, gave life to a little being whose birth became known to the empress. For despite the mystery with which Paul tried to surround himself in this sort of lowly adventure, in which the sovereign descended from his throne to sit on its footstool, Federowna found it out. Unwilling to let her little rival imagine she was in the least ignorant of her good fortune with the emperor, she called on her one day and handed her a pair of slippers and a nightcap for His Majesty. Yet the excellent Federowna did not afterward disdain to care personally for the fruit of her husband’s infidelity.

[C20-39 | source PDF 159–160]
If the purpose of making Paul hateful to his subjects was, as several works have stated, to transfer their affection to his son Alexander, the attempt had perhaps succeeded beyond all expectation. I have never seen a sovereign so loved by his people. In a half-civilized nation, such love could without exaggeration be called worship. He returned the love of those who felt it for him, although he valued Russian intelligence only for what it was worth and thought highly of French intelligence. One may say that he was wholly prejudiced in favor of our compatriots.

[C20-40 | source PDF 160–160]
At the time when the Admiralty moats, previously filled with perpetually muddy water, were being filled in, I was talking one day with some noblemen not far from the emperor, who was inspecting the works. Someone came to ask his permission to establish a fine café on the glacis. “And who wishes to establish this café?” asked the emperor. “Is he a Russian?” “No, Sire, a Frenchman!” “Very good, for Russians lack the knack.”

[C20-41 | source PDF 160–161]
Alexander was then far from feeling toward Bonaparte what he felt much later toward Napoleon. The most scandalous anecdotes about the First Consul were welcomed at his court, and retailing new ones was even a means of making one’s way. Bonaparte, it was said, had brought back a satrap’s indolence from Egypt. He lived only the life of a pasha and indulged in all the habits and all the languor of the East. In his apartments one saw nothing but scantily dressed women making him inhale perfumes: Madame Tallien, barefoot and displaying precious rings on every toe; another lady playing the favorite sultana; in short, a miniature seraglio, minus the mystery, since all its odalisques were named at random. Such ridiculous inventions passed for authentic truths, so much so that people at court asked me quite seriously for details of this kind. An inadvertence into which a commendable eagerness led me taught me, to my cost, how fashionable hatred of Bonaparte was, as will be seen later.

[C20-42 | source PDF 161–162]
My first concern after a few days’ rest had to be finding suitable lodgings, for the furnished hotels fell far short of offering the conveniences of Parisian hotels. On the contrary, they were entirely without them, and I could not even find an interpreter. I know that luxurious hotels have since been established even on Palace Square; but the Russians had not yet stayed on the banks of the Seine and come to receive their education in our country. I nevertheless had a high opinion of the nation among whom I had come to live. I thought I ought to keep up suitable appearances and establish myself in the largest and finest premises in the city. For 12,000 francs a year, therefore, I took lodgings in the house of Councillor Kousofnikoff, at the Kazan Bridge. My phantasmagoria occupied the rooms formerly called the Mascarades de Lyon. The street I chose, called the Perspective, is certainly the finest in Saint Petersburg. I later saw the beautiful Kazan church built there, whose peristyle is a hemispherical colonnade, a miniature of the colonnade of Saint Peter’s in Rome.

[C20-43 | source PDF 162–163]
The Perspective is a kind of imitation of our boulevards and offers more life than the rest of the city. For this city of 300,000 inhabitants, with its broad streets, vast squares and initially imposing appearance, soon begins to seem monotonous, especially to a Parisian. It lacks the bustle of pedestrians. One does not constantly jostle elbows there, as in our populous streets, come face to face with twenty different faces at every step, or stroll, to use the word, before splendid shops and elegant displays of merchandise. All that exists only in Paris; and Paris alone has those lively figures and animated faces that give its entire population an air of almost playful activity.

[C20-44 | source PDF 163–164]
In Saint Petersburg, without the noise of carriages, the streets would be as silent as Carthusian refectories. The Paris street urchin would be ill at ease there; for any urchin who took it into his head to sing, shout or whistle would certainly be called to order by the boutersnick, posted at various street corners to keep the peace. A mountebank, a conjurer or an open-air show would seem a phenomenon, if it were not regarded as a monstrosity; at least that was so in my time. Then no one in the theater would have dared express dissatisfaction with the play or the actors: Boileau’s famous line would have been a mere paradox there. On entering, one bought the right to watch, enjoy, be satisfied, even be bored, on condition of keeping silent. Hissing was a forbidden weapon, or rather an unknown one. With such habits of order, there were few public amusements or street curiosities, none of those occasions that draw passersby into successive groups and offer so many little dramas to shorten working people’s days. I have mentioned the Paris street urchin; you would look in vain for another type from our capital, the Parisian grisette. Those dancing taverns and drinking houses, that gaiety, that abandon, all those places of pleasure, that life and high spirits of our working classes, are unknown there. But what one does not encounter in Paris, and sees in several places in Saint Petersburg, are philosophical signs and eloquent emblems: for example, garlands of coffins elegantly suspended at the makers’ doors. You have every size to choose from, in length and breadth. Are you tall, stout, fat, thickset, slender, slight, puny, lean and stunted? Measure yourself, choose, buy your last garment, argue over your proportions and haggle. I can still see the display of this kind at the corner of the street where I lived, which obliged me to take a detour whenever I went out with my wife and children. These were, one must admit, playthings of too serious a kind.

[C20-45 | source PDF 164–166]
The reader will recall that I had come to Russia at the invitation of the Russian ambassador and M. Demidoff, so I did not arrive without letters of recommendation. I hastened to deliver them. My first visit was to Baron de Nicolaï, president of the Academy of Sciences. A letter from Count de Marcoff won me a most obliging reception. I had no less reason to praise the welcome secured by a recommendation from M. Sage, professor at the Mint, to the elderly Count de Strogonoff, president of the Academy of Fine Arts and the most amiable of men, or at least the most amiable of Russians. He had lived in Paris for a very long time and brought back an urbanity found even in Paris only in the most polished society. No one could have shown greater kindness in receiving a foreigner in need of protection. He immediately referred me to his nephew, M. de Novosiltsoff, the emperor’s private secretary, who succeeded M. de Nicolaï as president of the Academy of Sciences two months after my arrival. I had the good fortune to please this learned man, who took a keen interest in me, and I neglected nothing to deserve it. An otherwise unimportant circumstance contributed more than I could have expected. A German named Hoppé, a watchmaker and mechanic, had loudly announced the discovery of perpetual motion and applied to the Academy of Sciences, which seemed to me to have shown him some favor. It would, one must admit, have been no small disgrace for the learned body of Saint Petersburg to have taken under its protection the ridicule this man was about to bring upon himself. I spared it that small humiliation by writing in the newspapers that I promised 1,000 ducats to anyone who presented the Academy with a mechanism that could be kept under seal for a whole year and still remain in motion after that trial. The author of the supposed discovery would not submit to it. He favored me with an abusive letter, thus making me pay for the sarcasms I had denied to the scholars he had too easily won over. M. de Novosiltsoff was very grateful to me.

[C20-46 | source PDF 166–167]
I made these various calls promptly and thus prepared an audience for myself. Accordingly, a subscription list for the first six sessions, which I announced would explain every branch of physics, was immediately covered with the most distinguished names. Among them I saw those of all the foreign powers’ ministers, M. de Kotchoubeï, minister of foreign affairs, M. de Romanzoff, minister of commerce, M. Strogonoff and countless other noblemen and scholars. The demonstrations I was able to offer seemed well worth their curiosity. Several very recent discoveries had scarcely come to the Academy’s knowledge; and even where it glimpsed the theory of these experiments, it had yet to see them realized in practice. Thus I was about to show Russian society for the first time the marvelous effects of galvanism, Montgolfier’s hydraulic ram, the telegraphic invention, the magical illusions of panoramas, M. Thilorier’s thermolamp, the floscope, gas adapted to domestic use and the striking apparitions of phantasmagoria.

[C20-47 | source PDF 167–169]
To attract connoisseurs and occupy their attention agreeably during intervals and moments of waiting, I also possessed a host of objects of scientific and artistic interest. Among them I shall mention nine enamels of great value, not only for their merit but also for their dimensions, which may be a merit superior to all others. At least six men of great reputation, the celebrated David, MM. Vincent, Darcet, Fourcroy, Sage and Percier, now architect to His Majesty Louis-Philippe, who were charged in Year VI with reporting to the minister of the interior on the value of these pictures, stated that an artist commissioned to make a much smaller enamel portrait of Louis XIV had spent 40,000 francs without succeeding. My enamels represented mythological subjects. They had been commissioned by Henry II, who was killed in a tournament, and executed at Limoges in 1500 by the painter Courtois; thus they have existed for more than three centuries without losing their brilliance. Francis I used them to adorn the prison he had built for himself at Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne. They later passed into the hands of a certain Cave, an enameler, who sold them to the Directory for the Museum of French Monuments; but fear of being paid in assignats prevented him from delivering them. To avoid returning to the subject later, I shall say that these are the only objects I brought back to France. The Russian government was on the point of buying them and paying me very handsomely when a painter named Caraffe did me a disservice. This French artist had brought back to France, on returning from a journey to Egypt, drawings relating to the customs and costumes of that country. The government had not valued them as highly as he wished. Thoroughly dissatisfied, M. Caraffe took his drawings to Saint Petersburg and brought his resentment with him. Given the Russian court’s attitude toward the First Consul, arriving in a mood to disparage him was to arrive in a fair way to favor. This course brought the painter success, and he showed almost as much ill will toward his compatriots abroad as he had expressed toward the government of which he complained. I might have suffered from this unfortunate prejudice on other occasions had I not found constant allies in the sovereign’s kindness and the special protection of the court’s grand marshal, Count de Tolstoïe.

[C20-48 | source PDF 169–170]
My cabinet of physics deserved the favor it soon enjoyed among the Russian nobility, adorned as it was with valuable objects of every kind. I estimate the treasures packed in my cases on arrival at no less than 50,000 francs. Count de Romanzoff, minister of commerce, had given me, in connection with these cases, a token of his government’s protection of the sciences: he ordered them to leave customs intact and to be inspected only in my own house. Physicists know how highly one values instruments that are, for the most part, so fragile; they will appreciate how grateful I must have been to the minister.

[C20-49 | source PDF 170–171]
If proof were needed of the general success of my physics experiments, I would cite the admission of the opticians and instrument makers that they had sold more in the first two months of my demonstrations than they previously sold in ten years. I believe one may congratulate oneself on awakening a desire to learn in those around one, and on being fortunate enough to lend science some attraction. Nor did I lack a sign of another kind: the jealousy of several Germans. The Russians truly hold preeminence in no field in their own country. If the French possess it in matters of taste, literature and art, the Germans reserve it for themselves in the sciences at Saint Petersburg. The favor I enjoyed therefore seemed to them a usurpation, and my ever-growing audiences no longer allowed them to conceal their ill will. They had me attacked, I mean only a few anonymous men, in a newspaper with weapons suited to their habitual heaviness of mind and hierarchical habits. Could a man who traveled be regarded as a physicist, they asked, and ought not a physicist to hold civil office? These two great objections did nothing to diminish the popularity of my demonstrations in Saint Petersburg and, as may be imagined, caused me little embarrassment. After replying that neither place nor rank made a physicist, but knowledge and work, I contented myself with asking whether they also believed that to possess French wit one must be a German baron.

[C20-50 | source PDF 171–173]
M. de Novosiltsoff, among others, was little moved by the arguments hatched in German brains and was pleased to see me visit his library regularly every Sunday. Sunday was his reception day, and everyone under his administration unfailingly came to pay court. Native and foreign scholars also gathered there, especially Frenchmen and Germans, along with all the émigrés from our country engaged in the arts or sciences. As everyone knows, nothing is more remote from politics than the Saint Petersburg gazettes, devoted entirely to new appointments and ukases concerning the empire. It was therefore no small attraction for me to find, on a special shelf behind a row of octavo volumes, a large number of English newspapers placed there with each delivery. I do not know whether this was done secretly; at least I suspected so, perhaps because I had discovered them without looking and continued to profit from the discovery without mentioning it. I owed to this slight indiscretion my knowledge of the English publications most hostile to our First Consul. I remember a newspaper whose frontispiece bore a sphinx with Bonaparte’s profile; later it appeared only with its head cut off. The editor, a French émigré in London and author of the Acts of the Apostles, said of this suppression: “We have done justice to this sphinx that cannot be defined. Henceforth this newspaper will appear without a hydra’s head so fatal to Europe.” Yet the First Consul’s embroidered collar remained visible in the rest of the engraving. In a place where sarcasms and malicious thrusts at Bonaparte were so welcome, would it not have been the act of a skillful courtier always to have fresh material of this kind to retail without revealing its source?

[C20-51 | source PDF 173–173]
I owed a precious favor to M. Novosiltsoff’s kindness: the opportunity to make an ascent at the emperor’s expense and at the invitation of the Academy of Sciences, to which its president made the proposal. The Academy fully recognized the services ballooning could render to physics and conceived the hope that careful experiments might one day establish a law governing the decreasing density of the atmosphere. It decided to set aside part of the funds it owed to imperial munificence for the expenses of an ascent, and appointed the learned Professor Lovitz to follow all the balloon’s preparations with me and accompany me into the air.

[C20-52 | source PDF 173–175]
Parisians doubtless do not know that it is to a German, to M. Lovitz himself, that they owe the advantage of drinking Seine water purged of the more or less harmful substances it holds in solution: of drinking filtered water. This professor devised the method of purifying, disinfecting and preserving foodstuffs with charcoal. He owed the idea for this discovery to a rather singular circumstance, if it is true, as I was assured; my memory is not clear enough for me to say whether I learned this detail from the professor himself. A young man employed in transporting charcoal had fallen asleep one day beside a heap of it, doubtless at the edge of some hollow. While he slept, a collapse occurred and buried him completely. His disappearance was known, but its place and cause remained unknown. Only eight years later was he found by chance, in a remarkable state of preservation and free of all decomposition. An Englishman who heard of the fact repeated it to M. Lovitz, who conceived the plan of making some trials and succeeded perfectly. M. Lovitz was German. I have already observed that scholars of this nation predominated in Saint Petersburg; most members of the Academy of Sciences were recruited from among them. National pride and the desire to appear on a level with the civilization of other European countries did secure admission for Russians to this body, often justly, sometimes indulgently; but in general it may be said that they found it difficult to sustain the competition. I conducted some experiments with M. Lovitz, though without leaving the ground; for instance, he kindly helped me freeze mercury. As for the journey on which he was to share my basket, uncertain weather caused by the solstice, for it was June, and contrary winds carrying us toward the Baltic had forced its postponement. Since M. Lovitz’s poor health would require a further delay, the Academy resolved to designate another member in his place. This time it chose a Russian, M. Sacharoff, a distinguished chemist who accepted the mission with great eagerness.

[C20-53 | source PDF 175–176]
On June 30 our apparatus was set up in the Cadets’ Garden, and at four o’clock we were ready to leave. The emperor wished to honor the ascent with his presence; we waited for him in vain until seven. A great many noblemen and scholars had been invited to witness our departure, which took place at a quarter past seven. We had first released two small pilot balloons. A northeast wind initially carried them inland; but on reaching a greater height they took a different direction and were driven by an east wind toward the open sea. We had no doubt that the large aerostat would obey the same impulse; but it was no longer possible to delay setting out, and we climbed into the gondola.

[C20-54 | source PDF 176–176]
I had arranged a small table on the rim, on which M. Sacharoff immediately spread out papers and began to peruse them. The ropes were cut without his raising his eyes. We were twenty toises above the Neva, and he had not yet noticed that we had left the ground. I then invited him to look around us and enjoyed his surprise and delight at the immense scene unfolding beneath our feet. It comprised the whole surroundings of Saint Petersburg over a diameter of thirty versts. The horizon that framed it was bounded only by the dark gray vapors one sees forming toward the close of a fine day.

[C20-55 | source PDF 176–177]
Before long we were carried, as we had expected, toward the Baltic Sea. A new method enabled us to determine precisely the moment we reached the mouth of the Neva. It is well known that at a very great height the aeronaut may take everything below him for his zenith, since the terrestrial distances between objects vanish completely. To him, a league on the globe is only a point; deprived, moreover, of objects for comparison, he believes himself absolutely motionless. Once lost in space, it therefore matters that he possess a means of discovering the course he is following; I shall describe in its place the one I devised then. It also matters that he be able to establish his geographical position, that is, the relative position of objects on the ground and the fixed point above which the balloon is hovering. For this purpose we fitted a powerful achromatic telescope to the bottom of our basket. Set by means of a plumb line, it allowed us to look downward perpendicular to the horizon and distinguish exactly which point on earth lay beneath the aerostat.

[C20-56 | source PDF 177–179]
It was enough for us to brave the perils of the air cheerfully; we had no intention of placing ourselves in Icarus’s position between water and sky. Unfortunately, the aerial rudder has not yet been invented. We could avoid danger only by taking advantage of the two different wind directions at different heights. We descended again by opening the valve, hoping to recover the lower, opposing current.[C20-N3] We did indeed soon find ourselves carried inland, farther south, and our telescope enabled us to determine exactly when we left the gulf: it was then eight forty-five. We had nothing more to fear. Thirty pounds of ballast were thrown out at intervals, and at nine minutes past nine, with the mercury fallen to twenty-four inches, we sat down to table in the sky. Good humor made this little meal very agreeable. Rather fond of drinking, like all his compatriots, M. Sacharoff would not spare the last glass of champagne. He urged me to show sympathy to the end for a fellow countryman, adding that champagne had perhaps never attended such a celebration. As a prudent pilot, I knew how to resist. I pointed out to my guest that we had a boat to manage and that, if we happened to capsize, it would be far from easy to swim to safety.

[C20-57 | source PDF 179–180]
Nevertheless, M. Sacharoff was on his sixth bottle… I mean that he was at that moment imprisoning air for the sixth time, an operation he had repeated at every inch of fall in the mercury. The numbered bottles were enclosed in a carefully padded box which, when shut, looked like what is nowadays called a cellaret. I must say that a Russian, even a scholar, would have preferred it filled with liquids rather than gases, though physics might suffer a little thereby.

[C20-58 | source PDF 180–180]
I was forgetting to mention our first experiment: it took place when we uncorked our champagne. The carbonic acid gas escaped in an extremely rapid jet, and the instant it came into contact with the atmospheric air it produced very marked effervescence. A bottle of water displayed much the same phenomenon through the sudden expansion of the air it contained; but this latter phenomenon merely amazed us and caused us no distress.

[C20-59 | source PDF 180–181]
The observation I had made in Hamburg on the magnetic needle was fully confirmed before M. Sacharoff’s eyes when he repeated the experiment with great care. The declination needle being out of order, he consulted the dipping needle. He no longer found it horizontal: the north pole was raised by about ten degrees, and the south pole pointed downward toward the earth. I took M. Sacharoff’s place, and the result of my experiment agreed entirely with his. The needle’s disturbance, as a fact and apart from any exceptional cause that might explain it, was absolutely evident. Thus I did not hesitate to say in my report to the Academy: “Perhaps in the future this observation on a subject for which no satisfactory hypothesis has yet been offered, perhaps magnetic attraction, decreasing as the square of the distances, will give physicists a new means of guiding themselves in the sky and determining their height without the barometer! We must expect everything, hope for everything, from the new phenomena appearing in this new domain with which physics has once more been enriched.” The more or less plausible explanation of this anomaly has been seen earlier.

[C20-60 | source PDF 181–182]
We wished to attempt a host of experiments at this height; but the sun, which had continued to light us for an hour after becoming invisible to the inhabitants of the earth, had just disappeared altogether for us dwellers in heaven, and dampness thwarted us. Compelled to refrain, we made a rather heroic resolution: to spend the night among the clouds and await the sun’s return. No one would ever have been better placed to witness its rising. M. Sacharoff made the proposal; I accepted, and we shook hands to seal the treaty. On this occasion we even sacrificed a victim to the gods, to whom we were so close. An unfortunate pigeon, placed on the basket’s edge, made vain efforts to beat its wings. We cast it down, and its sheer fall gave us reason to believe it had not reached the region of dovecotes alive.

[C20-61 | source PDF 182–183]
However, the extreme distension of the aerostat through the release of an unusual quantity of carbonic acid gas mixed with hydrogen;[C20-N4] the accumulation of blackish vapors around the basket; the complete darkness into which we were about to be plunged, the earth having vanished entirely from our sight half an hour before; the lack of ballast, which would have left us unable to avoid the current toward the sea; and finally the damage a very damp atmosphere was doing to our scientific instruments: all these causes forced us to abandon our plan and head decisively for the earth, much to M. Sacharoff’s regret.

[C20-62 | source PDF 183–185]
On reaching the lower layers of the atmosphere, he spoke through a speaking trumpet pointed vertically toward the earth. His voice returned to us, reflected with extreme clarity and apparently without any loss of intensity. Tested at various heights, it took a longer or shorter time to return; and each time a slight undulation of the aerostat made perceptible the impulse imparted to the air by the sound. “This fluctuation,” I said in my report to the Academy, “seems likely to confirm that man on earth has the power to divert rain or a storm cloud by repeated shocks imparted to the atmospheric column through the noise of cannon or by other means. In one of our experiments, the voice was reflected only after ten seconds. According to Newton’s theory, sound should travel at only 900 feet in one second; yet accurate experiments have established its speed at 1,038 Paris feet per second. According to this law, the aeronauts’ voices would have traveled 10,580 feet in ten seconds. Now, since only half the distance must be counted to allow for the voice’s return by reflection, the aerostat would remain at a distance of 8,190 French feet from the earth. But sound’s ascent probably differs from its horizontal progress. Trials concerning this new law to be established might be interesting and furnish new data on the different layers and densities of the atmosphere, and on the action of sound under different conditions of temperature and humidity. Since no means of experimenting on sound is more convenient or more certain than an aerostat, it would be easy, with the aid of two watches reading sixtieths of a second, to determine its vertical progress and its ascending speed. In calm weather, a cannon set vertically in a large plain would be fired every thirty seconds. Observers on the ground and the aeronauts would record the moment of the experiment, the departure and arrival of the sound. In this way a certain and invariable law would be established.” I would point out that in the speaking-trumpet experiment the sound was not reflected when we spoke in a direction away from the earth.

[C20-63 | source PDF 185–186]
After passing through several vaporous layers, each of a different temperature, we saw the thermometer jump rather abruptly by several degrees. At that moment we caught sight of the earth, though rather indistinctly. We called in vain; only the echo answered. It would have been convenient to land in a village ahead of us, but a thick wood might have hampered our descent. A splendid garden appeared, and we seized the opportunity. I soon noticed chambermaids hurriedly closing windows, gardeners dropping to their knees and elegant ladies running out onto the steps to enjoy the peaceful spectacle of our descent. We came down directly before them, so calmly that the basket skimmed a bed of flowers without breaking a single one and settled on a beautiful lawn. We found ourselves before the château of His Excellency General Peter Gregoritsch Demidoff at Sivoritz, sixty-one versts, or twenty leagues, from Saint Petersburg. Had there been a fête at the château that day, our descent would have seemed planned; indeed, it would have been impossible to crown a day of pleasure with a finer feat of enchantment. As may readily be imagined, we had reason to congratulate ourselves on having fallen upon such hospitable ground.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-tailpiece.png]
Original tailpiece: a balloon above a country house, Volume II, p.174.

Original notes

[C20-N1 | source PDF 154–155]
M. Frogère died in the first month of the epidemic’s reign, at the age of eighty-four. It would have been impossible to find an old man who had better preserved the bearing, if not of youth, at least of middle age. He walked briskly, gestured with great animation and spoke very clearly. His memory was prodigious: he had not forgotten the name of a single Russian nobleman he had known at court or of any Frenchman he had met in Russia. I fear he did not escape the old man’s pitfall in a pleasure that becomes all the keener because it survives every other: I mean the sin of gluttony. M. Frogère readily drank every wine and ate every dish at a meal. He digested easily, but a single indisposition of this kind is enough to carry one very far. A fortnight before his death, I remember hearing him recite, without missing a single line, an unpublished poem of two hundred lines by a well-known poet whose name escapes me; the poet is no longer living. M. Frogère intended to write a book he would have called My Eighteen Years in Russia. To the end of his life he enjoyed the beneficence of that country’s court. Moreover, the elder M. Demidoff paid him a fairly substantial pension, which that wealthy nobleman’s sons always continued.

[C20-N2 | source PDF 158–158]
Until quite recently she lived in a mansion on the Rue de Rivoli.

[C20-N3 | source PDF 178–178]
The reader will doubtless find it interesting to compare this experiment with one of the same kind made by my eldest son in Lisbon on April 8, 1822, which M. Eugène Roch described as follows in a work entitled Essays on the Aerial Travels of Eugène Robertson in Europe, the United States of America and the West Indies:

“The most curious experiment of his journey was certainly this. The wind had carried him beyond the Tagus, about three leagues from Lisbon, when he noticed clouds above his head traveling in a direction opposite to his own. It seemed to him a novel idea to reach their height and return with them over the city by following the current of air that imparted this motion to them. He threw out ballast and reached a height of 16,000 toises. There his thermometer fell below zero. He felt very cold and breathed with difficulty; inflammable air escaped forcefully from the appendix; the hygrometer indicated dry conditions, for the air becomes so rarefied at that height that it rapidly absorbs moisture from the bodies it surrounds.

“M. Robertson’s conjecture was well founded, and his attempt succeeded completely. He passed back over the Tagus and returned to hover above Lisbon, where he at first intended to descend. But he recognized all the danger of such an attempt and landed beyond the city, on a fine plain near the aqueducts, so that the same people who had witnessed his departure could witness his return.

“This experiment in aerial navigation by means of opposing currents is of the highest interest.”

[C20-N4 | source PDF 182–182]
It must be observed that the materials remained distributed in the apparatus for twenty days, which must have produced a great deal of oxide. Moreover, at the time of the experiment I could not find enough quicklime to rid myself of the carbonic acid gas, and I was obliged to wash my gas in water whose lime had partly entered into effervescence.

Editorial record

The synopsis names Paul I in connection with the animal transformation, while the narrative names Peter I. Both printed forms are retained. The opening chamber’s huit pieds carrés is interpreted as eight feet square, rather than an eight-square-foot area, in the context of the illustrated room; no modern dimension is substituted.

All prism dimensions and the eight diagram-key entries AA,BB,C,D,F,GG,H,K are retained. The historical claim that Figure6 is half size and the claim that K is actual size refer to the original printing, not to the scalable digital reproduction. Figures5–7 are reproduced from original-source masters with all labels retained.

The preceding chapter says a six-month Hamburg stay; this passage says a year. The passage first gives twelve days for the crossing and later eleven days to Kronstadt. These source differences remain without invented reconciliation.

Rob is retained as the historical product name. The medical claims, Columbus allusion, allegations about Bigel and description of Russian tariffs are Robertson’s account, not modern clinical or legal guidance. Livres of annual income, rubles and kopecks remain unconverted.

Saardam is preserved in the historical allusion; English uses Travemünde,Lübeck and Kronstadt for the printed Travemonde,Lubeck and Cronstadt. Bouers is the source name for the vessels. The figure5 label appears in the illustration rather than in OCR and must remain visible in the crop.

The author’s national character judgments, allegations of British complicity in Paul’s death and Balachoff’s Nelson anecdote are translated as his historical account, without presenting them as independently verified conclusions. Printed dates, five-year reign and first-year-of-century formulation remain unchanged.

The printed transliteration is naye is retained with the author’s gloss I know; no reconstructed Russian is substituted. Suvorov and Kutuzov are conventional English forms of Souwaroff and Kutusoff. Revel, Balachoff, Petrowski and Chouvalof retain the source forms; the masked count remains N***.

Frogère’s complete two-page note is retained. The unnamed epidemic and unnamed deceased poet are not supplied by conjecture. Chapeau à cornes is rendered cocked hat; the anecdote concerns borrowing the emperor’s hat, not a wig.

The enamels passage prints Henry II, the date1500, and Francis I in that sequence. These chronologically conflicting claims are retained, together with the author’s description of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne as a prison; no corrected provenance or date is silently substituted.

The Perspective and Mascarades de Lyon retain the historical names used here. The author calls the Kazan colonnade hemispherical; the translation retains that geometrical wording. Boutersnick retains the printed form. Grisette denotes the familiar Parisian working-girl type. Boileau’s line is alluded to but not quoted in the source, so no verse is supplied.

PDF177 prints zénith for objects below the aeronaut; zenith is retained rather than silently changed to nadir. The downward telescope and plumb line make the intended direction clear. The June30 date is not converted to another calendar or supplied with an unprinted year.

The Lisbon quotation prints16,000 toises, not16,000 feet; this extraordinary altitude is retained as printed, without endorsing it or conjecturally changing its unit. The quote’s hygrometer indicating une température sèche is rendered dry conditions. April8,1822 and all three paragraphs are retained.

The magnetic account retains the printed north-pole rise of about10degrees, the author’s decreasing as the square of the distances formulation and his claim of corroboration. These historical claims are not replaced with modern physical theory. The entire pigeon episode and the gas-preparation note are retained.

The sound calculation prints1,038 Paris feet per second,10,580 feet in ten seconds and8,190 French feet after halving. All three figures were checked on PDFs183–184 and retained. They do not agree arithmetically:1,038×10=10,380, and half10,380 is5,190; half the printed10,580 is5,290. The passage’s weather-control proposal remains the author’s historical speculation.

Montres à tierces is rendered watches reading sixtieths of a second, preserving the historical subdivision rather than mistaking tierces for thirds of a second. The printed61 versts (20leagues) is retained without modern conversion. The champagne-as-compatriot joke and the bottle/cellaret double meaning remain in English.

Volume II, Chapter V

The tsar as a Jacobin. M. Garnerin’s escapade. An appetite for candle ends. The Russians as great eaters. A small meal before dinner. Journey to Riga. Portrait of Kotzebue. Account of the Riga ascent. A new appearance of the clouds. Basket anchors. The postmaster and the actress. The dreary appearance of the roads. Portable houses. The sleeping post. Visit to M. Cobentzel. The speaking crucifix. The hole that reopens. The angel who kills himself. The cross of Migue. The priest, his flock and the sheep.

[C21-01 | source PDF 187–189]
Among the phenomena I displayed to satisfy Russian curiosity, the illusions of phantasmagoria were by no means the least astonishing. My apparitions, which I varied with subjects of every kind, were always applauded. Yet one day, early in my engagement, excessive zeal led me into a blunder that taught me the importance of sounding the ground wherever one wishes to establish oneself, and first knowing where one is treading. In Paris my phantasmagoria performances usually ended with a display of Victory or Minerva crowning a hero whose features were unmistakably Bonaparte’s. I must confess frankly: in Paris Bonaparte was the local saint; in Saint Petersburg it was Alexander. And truly, without allowing this assertion to carry consequences in more serious matters, the patron saint whose feast one must keep is the one of the place where one happens to be. In experiments that could not take place without the authorities’ continuing approval, I took care not to neglect this rule of prudence. Besides, as I have said, the general love for Alexander was such that showing his image was bound to please the spectators. Unfortunately for me, Alexander invariably wore a dark green coat. This color reflected so little light that I was obliged to dress him differently. I foolishly substituted scarlet as the most brilliant color. At once the police were in an uproar: they saw nothing but the carmagnole jacket and the red cap! The tsar as a Jacobin! What was I thinking? Nothing but Siberia could expiate my crime! At least that was what the city’s governor promised me if I repeated the offense. This time they contented themselves with closing my show for a few days and demanding a list of my artificial apparitions, forbidding me ever again to attempt the monarch’s image, a figure so sacred that no one was to presume to copy his features without his permission. Thus my ghosts lost their individual liberty, and from then on shadows were subjected to preventive censorship.

[C21-02 | source PDF 189–190]
The ban did not last long. My rooms filled as before, much to the disappointment of M. Garnerin, who was then in Saint Petersburg, as I have said, and would not have been sorry to see some incident arise that might embroil me more seriously with the police, even if his own little person had to lend a hand. Indeed, one day when I had a full house, and the audience, composed of society’s elite, was waiting in complete darkness for thrills of tombs and ghosts, a sudden cry made everyone start. It did not come from the tomb that an obedient specter was about to open before the assembly’s eyes, but from the back of the room, where there were only people who had never been dead. The voice cried, “Stop, stop! I am being insulted! I am being murdered!” Confusion spread among the spectators; but at the first cry I pronounced the famous fiat lux, and in the blink of an eye light was restored to the living. Everyone looked at everyone else. Astonishment was universal, for all that could be read on every face was mutual surprise at being unable to guess the riddle. Calm returned. I then came forward with a lantern to question each person. A young Russian nobleman, a friend of mine, asked me to come his way and pointed out the person who had complained. I recognized my man by his stature, though he was buried up to his nose in an enormous pelisse. “What!” I said. “It is you, Monsieur Garnerin, who have just raised such an alarm! What has been done to you? Who has insulted you?” M. Garnerin stammered a few words. But the assembly, well aware of his ill will toward me, demanded that he leave the room. A few days after this singular escapade, the police ordered him to leave Saint Petersburg and issued him a very stringent passport, of which M. Kotzebue said a word in an account I shall soon have occasion to quote.

[C21-03 | source PDF 190–191]
I might reserve for later a few details about the Russians’ excessive appetite, attested by every historian and deserving to become proverbial; but my phantasmagoria experiments furnish a rather strange example here. The approaches to my staircase and cabinet of physics were lit by a number of candles that invariably disappeared after the public came in, so that they had to be replaced before the audience left. For a few days I patiently bore this small loss, but it continued and finally became even more inconvenient than costly. I complained to M. Hertels, the police superintendent, who posted watchers. The culprit was caught in the act: a muzhik who worked as a mason. “Here,” M. Hertels told me, using one of our popular expressions, “is a man who owes you a fine candle, for he is the one who ate all those you lost.” The poor muzhik had been whipped and confessed that, since my arrival, he had enjoyed an excellent breakfast every day at my expense… a breakfast of tallow!

[C21-04 | source PDF 191–193]
That is doubtless the appetite of people of the lowest classes, sparing not even the coarsest food and knowing no other treat than raw turnips. But the higher classes, even the foremost in the nation, though feeding on delicate, succulent dishes, show no less inclination to eat morning, evening and at every hour. I do not call this voracity, as did the author of a Summary of the History of Russia. It is a simple need of nature in a biting climate, where the exceedingly brisk air constantly assists and accelerates digestion. Such is the cause assigned by physiologists and physicians. I shall venture to add another, which would, I admit, find fault with that nature whose foresight I so delight in admiring, and which I have so often seen place a remedy beside an ill and a resource beside a need. I therefore say that food, whether vegetable or animal, is far from being as succulent or as nourishing as one advances northward as it is in southern or even intermediate countries. Fruit and vegetables there have almost no flavor. I never ate a partridge there with that exquisite aroma that makes it so prized, and game always seemed tasteless to me. Consequently the dishes that make up a meal are digested more easily and quickly, and the stomach, less well nourished by an equal quantity of food, more often needs replenishment. The custom of dining at two o’clock, which seems to have prevailed throughout Europe, persisted longer in Russia. French fashion has finally prevailed: dinner is at four. But to leave the guests no regrets for the past, they are offered, under the name lachale, a small interim meal to calm an exuberance of appetite which, while promising the grand feast spirited guests, would turn into ravenous hunger without these preliminaries. One may choose Hamburg beef, caviar or sturgeon roe, a product of the Volga that is very heating and substantial, and cheeses of various kinds. All these hors d’oeuvres are offered to the gourmets and never remain untouched; above all, spirits keep filling the glasses, which are briskly emptied.

[C21-05 | source PDF 193–195]
During a long stay in Saint Petersburg I was naturally able to make other observations on aspects of the country’s manners that differ from our habits. But I shall let them find their place as occasions arise, without interrupting the course of my travels or excursions. After the first successes of my experiments, my first balloon journey and my first harvest, it seemed prudent not to exhaust curiosity at one stroke or languish in Saint Petersburg while the entire nobility remained in the country. A journey to Vienna by post, allowing me to return at the beginning of winter, appealed to me. I therefore hurried straight to Riga, where I resolved to stay for a while. Its population of 50,000 gave me reason to hope that an ascent would be profitable, since no such spectacle had yet taken place there. By a fortunate chance, the celebrated Kotzebue was in the city. He was then traveling through the part of Russia that furnished the observations published in his book Recollections of a Journey in Livonia and Italy. The governor of Riga kindly introduced me to this writer, whose pages sometimes have something of Voltaire’s causticity but almost always abound in tedious detail, the usual fault of the German school. In any case, he resembled Voltaire more in his face than in his pen. Like the philosopher of Ferney, he had a lean constitution and a thin face, with something in his features of the sardonic expression that defines our great writer’s countenance. In the first volume of these Memoirs the reader has seen several descriptions of my phantasmagoria by Poultier, Ducray-Duminil, Mercier and other well-known writers. I shall too seldom have the good fortune of finding so famous a pen as Kotzebue’s to describe my ascents for me to withhold from my readers the chapter he was pleased to devote to me in the book just cited, under the title Robertson’s Ascent.

[C21-06 | source PDF 195–196]
“In Riga I saw Robertson make a balloon ascent. I do not doubt for a moment that we shall succeed in steering balloons, and I am certain we should already have done so had necessity, that great teacher, made its voice heard, as it probably did among the navigators who crossed the vast ocean. As long as journeys through the air are intended merely to provide a spectacle for eager curiosity, their only aim will be to drift with the winds. But let the genius of a bold engineer be inspired by the desire to rise above want, or even by love, and you will soon see balloons filled with inflammable air sailing in numbers as great as the swallows. This thought makes a balloon journey doubly interesting to me. I imagine that perhaps a young man in love will leave his palace and his attendants by night to visit his beloved a hundred miles away; or that an affectionate father, whose wife and children are starving in a besieged city, will boldly rise into the air, float over the enemy camp, deposit in the city the bread that served as ballast for his basket, and joyfully return a few hours later. If I turn to lighter subjects, I imagine a young and vigorous Faublas descending into the garden of a convent of nuns, to the old mother superior’s great astonishment. Ah, what an immense new field this opens for novelists! Knights and ghosts will soon give way to aeronauts.

[C21-07 | source PDF 196–197]
“I like Robertson’s boldness and composure. He made his preparations with as much coolness as speed. He had instilled such confidence in his wife that she watched, without visible emotion, the approach of the moment when an immense, rockless sea would separate her from her husband. His son, a pretty child, ran about playing among the spectators. When the globe was inflated, Robertson climbed into the basket, went around the circle and gave the signal to depart. The ropes were released, but the balloon fell back, and Robertson began throwing sand onto the spectators beneath him to lighten it. He rose, though not very high. The wind, which was fairly strong, tilted the balloon, and for some time it swayed above the roof of a house, greatly alarming us. He was about to run aground on this rock when he escaped the danger by throwing out, just in time, the rest of his ballast and even his coat. Then he rose majestically to the sound of the public’s applause. He came down safely a few miles from Riga on the road to Saint Petersburg, leaving an uncertain element to find himself on earth again.

[C21-08 | source PDF 197–197]
“What made this ascent more remarkable was the presence of Garnerin, his rival. This little man has made his greed a subject of conversation everywhere; perhaps even the birds he has visited know something of it. His mocking expression that day clearly showed the hidden wish to see Robertson’s enterprise fail. Had he possessed faith like the mustard seed spoken of in the Gospel, and thereby been able to move mountains, he would certainly have placed one of the Alps in his rival’s path instead of houses. It is said that, on leaving Russia, he was obliged to promise never to return. At least, a postmaster claimed to have read this flattering clause on his passport.”

[C21-09 | source PDF 197–199]
Taking up M. Kotzebue’s account at the point where he was obliged to leave me, since he remained on earth, I shall add a few details of the rest of the ascent. I was not very high when the spectators lost sight of me, but only at an altitude of 600 toises. The clouds had already drawn their moving curtain beneath me. At that height I collected air that could not be analyzed very accurately, for the cloud surrounding me was on the point of dissolving into rain. The little vesicles of water composing it were visible and seemed to move. Earlier I gave a description of clouds that has been repeated several times by aeronauts who came after me; but I cannot confine myself to what I said then. Clearly, clouds undergo a host of atmospheric variations in form, speed, transparency and opacity, and must present infinitely varied aspects to a traveler who frequently ventures above them. Seen from some distance during the ascent I am describing, their vaporous masses underwent continual transformations and seemed to roll slowly upon themselves. To be among these light, advancing mountains in gloomy weather, amid a silence of which no earthly solitude can give any idea, has something imposing for the mind as well as the eye. A poetic imagination would see in the spectacle then offered a kind of image of chaos.

[C21-10 | source PDF 199–200]
Within a few moments I felt myself covered with water, though I could not have said that it was raining. The balloon’s rotation, usually imperceptible though habitual, became noticeable to me several times. I thought I saw it obey the current of the clouds and yield to their undulations. Scientific work being impracticable, I devoted myself chiefly to observing my balloon as well. I tried to discover some means of making it deviate to one side or the other, some workable maneuver to keep it at a given altitude, some method of determining its direction in the air and calculating its speed and diagonal course when bringing it down in a particular place. These trials, these tentative experiments, were also necessary at that very moment if I was to end my flight successfully. I had indeed drawn closer to earth and was floating above immense forests of fir trees, which presented thousands of darts to me, as though they had risen from the ground to prevent an enemy from approaching it. A circular space without trees, twice the diameter of my balloon, did not escape my notice. I was fortunate enough to maneuver so as to come down in this woodland clearing. Harpoons that drove into the earth and fastened the bottom of the basket to the ground—a device no one had used before this ascent—were a great help. They enabled me, without outside assistance, to complete an excursion whose conclusion is always so difficult in deserted places.

[C21-11 | source PDF 200–201]
I had occasion to reflect how much more frequent practice in balloon experiments could teach an observant aeronaut about the handling of balloons. If the progress of the child, as Franklin calls it, has remained stationary compared with the means of locomotion used on land and water, is it not because people live their everyday lives on those two elements, where experiments multiply endlessly because they are easy and inexpensive? Ballooning, on the contrary, is inaccessible through its expense to most men whose courage lacks the support of wealth, and through its dangers to those whose wealth would allow them to follow the promptings of courage.

[C21-12 | source PDF 201–202]
My balloon was half folded when a herdsman[C21-N1] and two children ran up at the sound of my voice. A quarter of an hour later they were followed by M. Ernest de Berg, the court councillor Blandkerchauzen, the theater director Meyer and the secretary Jean Schwart. These gentlemen all signed the official record of my descent onto a circular patch of meadow near the little river Kreuppe, which in Russian means Russian brook, twenty versts from Riga.

[C21-13 | source PDF 202–205]
Eager to reach Vienna and then return to Saint Petersburg, I had little time to lavish on Riga. I therefore remained in the city only eight or nine weeks, the time needed to give a few performances and prepare and carry out my ascent. This short stay had been enough for me to earn at least twice the cost of my journey. It must be remembered that the round trip between the capitals of Russia and Austria covered more than a thousand leagues. Few men, I believe, have crossed the plains and traveled the highways of different countries as much as I have. I have always needed to move quickly, but I have found few postmasters, especially in Russia, who sympathized with this requirement of my occupations. Unless you are bedecked with decorations proclaiming a person of influence, or at least a member of the noble class, expect an endless wait. When traveling post, hours lost are days; what then when the delay extends to three or four days! One would scarcely believe it, yet nothing is more real. You inspect the registers; you see horses in the stable. No matter! They are reserved by higher orders for extraordinary service and may be required at any moment. Go and complain, you will be told. But to whom? Most of these posting stations stand isolated, far from any dwelling, and also serve as inns for the travelers they fleece. The authorities live five or six leagues away. And once you are finally back in your carriage, you heartily wish the devil would wring the postmaster’s neck, but you do not waste time doing him harm in this world; you think only of making up the time lost. A few years after my departure, an actress much loved in Russia and very celebrated in Saint Petersburg obtained a fortnight’s leave to give a concert in Riga. Getting into the carriage, arriving to sing and setting off by post again: everything had to happen at the appointed moment, for the time allowed had been precisely calculated. He who reckons without his host reckons twice, we say in France; he who reckons without the postmasters in Russia may well reckon ten times. One of these gentlemen, seeing Madame Dangeville—for it is she of whom I speak—alone and without the support of a decorated man, flatly refused her horses despite her entreaties. She made offers; they were refused in the hope of better ones. This comedy had continued for twenty-four hours. Exasperated beyond measure, Madame Dangeville was about to increase her first proposals and resign herself to sacrificing more rubles when, as in a novel, one of her greatest admirers, a man of high rank, arrived. He was astonished to meet his favorite actress in such a place and by such a chance. “Why, what are you doing here, madam?” “Alas, my lord, I am waiting for you. At least, I must suppose so, for I am very like the Sleeping Beauty, who cannot wake until a prince comes to deliver her. Only I am not sleeping; I am raging. I cannot leave: no horses. For twenty-four hours the postmaster has refused me any.” “Twenty-four hours! The scoundrel shall regret it.” Ten minutes later Madame Dangeville was galloping down the highway in one direction and the prince in another. That very evening the postmaster was in prison, to learn for a fortnight, from his own experience, the vexations of a compulsory halt.

[C21-14 | source PDF 205–205]
For my part, I met no nobleman to secure justice for me, and spent two days heaping curses on an infernal man who placed his kitchen, his beds and everything usable in his house at my disposal, except horses. I yielded to the entirely legitimate spirit of revenge that possessed me, though limiting myself to retaliation in kind. Just before leaving I found a favorable moment to seize all his registers and put them on top of a cupboard. I imagine the wretch must have spent cruel hours of anxiety, for the police could have dealt with him harshly if he failed to produce them. But since things used every day were kept in the same place, I think he escaped with only one bad night. In satisfying my resentment, moreover, I was exposing myself to imprisonment. I therefore breathed much more freely once I found myself a quarter of a league from that wretched hovel.

[C21-15 | source PDF 206–206]
The road offered me very little diversion. In Russia and Poland, generally speaking, one must expect few of the pleasures travel affords. Everyone knows the enjoyment of a reasonably well-prepared meal after long leagues of a carriage’s monotonous, though rapid, motion. It restores the body and almost equally refreshes the mind by reviving the brain. In these two countries, count only on scanty food, neither carefully chosen nor properly prepared. Eggs and coffee: that is what you will be offered. One might think one was traveling during Lent. The eyes are scarcely better satisfied than the stomach. The landscape is dreary and monotonous. Those charming homes of rich men or prosperous landowners that dot the French countryside, glimpsed despite the speed of travel on hills, in hollows, beside a little river or a short distance from a wood, are nowhere to be found in these regions. Nothing is more cheerful than the appearance of our villages, which, with a few provincial exceptions, offer fairly clean houses, painted or entirely white, with red-tiled roofs. Over there, on the contrary, there are only wooden houses suggesting neither comfort nor happiness.

[C21-16 | source PDF 207–207]
Perhaps one of Russia’s more singular peculiarities is the trade in wooden houses, seen in great numbers in Moscow’s public squares. They are sold already built; the buyer has them dismantled, loaded onto a wagon and carried wherever he pleases to become the home of an entire family. A whole village could thus disappear and be transported any desired distance from its original site. This custom does not belie the Muscovites’ origins: they have merely improved on the method of their ancestors, the Scythians, who used only wagons and tents in their nomadic life. I confess I was no little surprised the first time a peasant, seeing me examine his house with some attention, came to offer it for sale. It stood in a remote district, and I began to laugh, thinking that he too meant to joke. “I have no wish to live here,” I said. “Otherwise your house would suit me well enough.” “You will take it with you,” he replied. As my eyes widened, he explained in detail how one went to buy a house at a market or fair.

[C21-17 | source PDF 207–209]
Houses of this kind are almost the only ones seen along the roads I am describing, of which I paint no alluring picture. The only advantage I can acknowledge in them, in truth the foremost of all, is their freedom from highway robbers. Day and night I have always traveled there in complete safety. Yet it has often happened, after several hours of deep sleep—which neither the slowing nor the acceleration of the carriage interrupts in me—that I found myself only a short distance from where I had set out, especially on a dark night. I rubbed my eyes, scarcely able to believe I was not moving. Then, putting my head out of the carriage window, I could make out the horses lying down and managing perfectly well without bedding, while the postilion, sheltered beneath my post chaise, enjoyed a delicious nap. It took every kind of exhortation and threat to persuade the young peasant to resume the journey. They are all given to superstition, fear the dark and constantly cross themselves, which does not prevent them from pilfering whenever they can. I believe I was obliged to replace the wheel wrench and grease pot twenty times between Saint Petersburg and Vienna. At least the muzhik who made free with my candles had hunger, if not rather a taste for delicacies, as his excuse.

[C21-18 | source PDF 209–209]
After such journeys and such long days of boredom, how the heart opens on entering a city like Vienna or Warsaw! There one rediscovers the life and movement that had vanished. The contentment painted on faces, the pleasure shining in people’s eyes and springing from the comfort of city life, seem an almost new spectacle. The sight of an elegantly dressed woman makes you smile with pleasure when throughout the journey not a single face has offered a pleasing reminder of her sex. In Vienna especially, nothing cheers the newcomer like the little Phrygian cap of gold fabric adorning the heads of some pretty maids. I have noticed that foreigners never look indifferently at this cheerful headwear and the teasing little faces beneath it.

[C21-19 | source PDF 209–209]
The pleasure of finding myself amid civilization again, after a fortnight of monotony and every kind of privation, was so great that, despite my fatigue, I had considerable difficulty resisting the theater on the very evening of my arrival.

[C21-20 | source PDF 209–211]
The next morning Baron Hoppé, secretary to Count Cobentzel, the minister and secretary of state whom I had had the honor of knowing in Paris, came to my hotel on His Excellency’s behalf. My first reaction was surprise. “How,” I asked, “does the count already know I am in Vienna?” “The list of arrivals is sent to him every day,” M. Hoppé told me, “and the minister asks you to visit him tomorrow at four.” I readily accepted the invitation. I was immediately shown into his study, where I noticed with some astonishment a bust of Napoleon on the mantelpiece. The count signed several papers and, when he had finished, came toward me with expressions of friendship. “And where have you come from, my dear Robertson?” he asked. “What a schoolboy’s roundabout route you have taken from Paris to Vienna, by way of Saint Petersburg! Good God! A Parisian comes to us from the depths of Russia! How could you leave the land of delights, the paradise of Europe, to exile yourself toward the pole, to go to a savage country where surely no one can understand you? And what have you come here to do? Make ascents? Thoughtless fellow! Should you not have made inquiries before traveling so far? What! Do you not know that balloons have been prohibited in Vienna since the ascent M. Blanchard failed to make twenty years ago, which nearly caused an insurrection?” “Can that be!” I said at once, looking dismayed. “But what has an unsuccessful ascent to do with a successful one? I answer for mine without hesitation.” M. de Cobentzel showed every desire to oblige me. He promised to write to the emperor, who was at the camp at Prague, and revived my courage by encouraging the confident hope that his request on my behalf would succeed.

[C21-21 | source PDF 211–211]
While awaiting the outcome of these efforts, I occupied myself with exploring the city and getting to know its curiosities.

[C21-22 | source PDF 211–212]
The ramparts, which turn the city proper into a sort of fortress amid the other dwellings, surprised me above all. These walls prevent the city from expanding and merging with its suburbs; they are both an obstruction and a useless oddity. Yet since the French demonstrated, by arriving in Austria’s capital virtually at forced marches, that these fortifications were merely ridiculous, the glacis and moats have begun to be transformed into much more pleasant gardens. It was in these very moats that the governor of the city had sworn to bury himself before surrendering. The French apparently gave him no time to do so, for three days later they were strolling along the Graben, and no inscription there, as far as I know, commemorates a desperate death.

[C21-23 | source PDF 212–212]
Less noisy than Paris and London, this city, which has only about 250,000 inhabitants, draws a particular charm from their gentleness and peaceful manners. Existence moves less quickly, and one somehow feels life more fully than in those other two capitals, where even the idlest man has no time to answer you. Nowhere are the women gentler or more compassionate, or the men more honest and industrious. I have had reason to be grateful for the helpfulness and kindness of everyone to whom I have needed to turn for information. I am pleased to praise even the good nature and benevolence of the Capuchin friar who leads visitors into the vast crypt beneath his order’s church, where the royal tombs of the house of Austria are found.

[C21-24 | source PDF 212–213]
Vienna certainly rivals Paris and London in everything concerning the fine arts, the sciences and literature, and in collections of every kind. Its library has been described as the largest in Europe, but in that respect it falls far short of the national library in Paris. Vienna’s is said to contain 300,000 volumes and 12,000 manuscripts; Paris’s holds 72,000 manuscripts and 800,000 volumes. What seemed to me the most precious treasure of these literary archives was the original manuscript of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

[C21-25 | source PDF 213–213]
I shall not list the many monuments and buildings I visited, which everyone knows. As may readily be imagined, I did not forget to see in the civic arsenal the head of Kara Mustapha, the Turkish grand vizier who had commanded at the last siege of Vienna. The following year he was strangled in Belgrade, and the Viennese did not fail to procure so important a trophy as the Turkish general’s head.

[C21-26 | source PDF 213–214]
Among the many beautiful churches, the one that particularly attracted my attention was St. Stephen’s, an admirable monument whose tower is 425 feet high and, I believe, a few feet lower than Strasbourg’s, which I have also visited. The latter is four meters lower than the Great Pyramid of Egypt. Twenty times, too, I stood enraptured before Canova’s finest work: the mausoleum of Archduchess Christine in the Augustinian church.

[C21-27 | source PDF 214–215]
As something of a magician, I have always listened with interest to accounts of miracles, which I have invariably found easy to perform with a little specialized knowledge or some skillful trickery on the performer’s part, and a certain dose of ignorance or credulity on that of the dupes. The good Austrians certainly do not rival the Spanish in superstition. Though somewhat similar, they have a less fervent faith but a more innocent trust. The Jesuits therefore find themselves on holy ground there and have always performed wonders. Was I not shown, carefully preserved in the Vienna treasury, the wooden crucifix that spoke to Emperor Ferdinand II at the beginning of the seventeenth century, saying to him very distinctly: Ferdinande non te deseram? This crucifix had received an education, since it spoke Latin; moreover, it told the truth. The Jesuits never abandon princes who, like him, believe the words of crucifixes. Their spokesman is treated with great respect. To show the value attached to it, it was placed on Empress Maria Theresa’s sarcophagus at her funeral.

[C21-28 | source PDF 215–215]
Emperor Joseph II, who had the misfortune to be a philosopher, was not endowed with so trusting a faith. In his day there still existed in the church of the Minims a hole that, according to tradition, could never be stopped up. The monks asserted that the devil, driven by exorcism from a possessed person’s body, had escaped through it. “Very good,” said the emperor, who knew the story. “All the more reason to stop up this hole. The devil will no longer come out of it.” A mason accomplished the task at the first attempt. But the next day the hole was open again. The devil seemed to have claws that defied mortar; three times he scratched so effectively that the brickwork could not hold. At last the emperor grew angry and posted a sentry. “If the devil comes out,” he said, “the sentry will shoot him, and instead of shutting him in, we shall kill him.” This time the devil took fright and stayed beneath the quicklime. The rogue feared bullets!

[C21-29 | source PDF 215–217]
Joseph I had shown no more distrust of the good Fathers, to judge by the following anecdote, which was told to me then and which a seemingly well-founded tradition has preserved in the city and indeed throughout the kingdom. Augustus II, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, when he was still only a prince of Saxony, traveled to Vienna, where he formed the closest friendship with the archduke, later emperor under the name Joseph I. Both were great hunters and passionate devotees of physical exercise, in which they excelled. These shared tastes had made them inseparable; one was seldom seen without the other. They had lived in this intimacy for a considerable time when the prince of Saxony suddenly noticed a marked coolness in the archduke’s manner. Pressed to explain the reason, the latter resisted for a long time, but at last yielded to his friend’s insistence. “It is heaven,” he told him one day, “that wishes us to part. The religion you profess is doubtless the cause.” (The reigning family of Saxony had not yet embraced the Catholic religion.) “At any rate, for several nights I have received orders to separate from you. An angel delivers them to me. For a long time I thought my senses were mistaken, or that the warning was the effect of an idle dream; but I can no longer doubt that heaven’s will is being manifested to me in this way. Further resistance would be a failure of faith and an act of rebellion.” Joseph I was exceedingly surprised by this revelation. “God’s will be done,” he said to his friend, “if such is heaven’s will. But so that we have nothing to reproach ourselves with, allow me to make sure that heaven really speaks and to await the angel’s visit.” Augustus consented. When night came, they waited for the angel, who duly appeared and repeated the order from above. Joseph I at once rushed toward the heavenly messenger in the darkness, seized him with a strong hand, dragged him to an open window and said: “If you have wings, then fly!” The next morning a dead Jesuit was found in the courtyard. It was the devil disguised as an angel.

[C21-30 | source PDF 217–219]
A miraculous apparition that caused a great stir in France a few years ago clearly showed that the children of Ignatius had not degenerated and had lost nothing in exile of their distinctive art of serving heaven through pious frauds. One might even imagine the Jesuit sect far older than is believed, and Loyola merely its restorer. It seems, indeed, to have been fully organized in Constantine’s day, since the priests doubtless played on that emperor the same trick by which they recently tried to beguile some poor villagers. The famous labarum was probably only the first performance of the cross of Migné, and one may safely say, I think, that this latest miracle is simply borrowed afresh from the Greeks. It will doubtless be remembered that the appearance of a luminous cross above the church of the village that gave the miracle its name made a profound impression on those present. Pious souls and good people devoutly believed in the manifestation of a heavenly sign; others mocked it as a priest’s trick. Perhaps, had the cross been less well formed and appeared for a shorter time, one might have suspected some phenomenon of atmospheric electricity in this marvel. But it is much better explained by optical effects of the simplest kind. Beginning with Father Kircher, who about a century ago possessed in Rome the most curious and magnificent collection in the world, known as the Museum Kirkerianum, whose description and illustrations fill a folio volume, all the reverend Fathers have devoted themselves to the study of experimental physics. I was able to confirm this at the college of Polosk, where I saw the Jesuits at close quarters. I shall speak of that visit in its proper place.

[C21-31 | source PDF 219–219]
As for the miracle of the cross of Migné, lovers of illusions may amuse themselves by performing it and understanding the very simple procedure that could have been used to convert Constantine to Christianity. A first method would be to obtain the effect with the fantascope, as in the first volume. The image, drawn small and transparent, is enlarged by the optical lenses and appears on smoke released at the right moment and suitably directed.

[C21-32 | source PDF 219–220]
Here is a second method. Let us place ourselves in a room or a church. Inside we have only one light, but a bright and intense one, and it has only one opening, at B, through which to appear outside. This opening, cut through in the shape of a cross, will measure twelve to fifteen pouces. It is easy to understand that the light must be reflected from the first body it encounters. Now suppose a heavy fog, dark weather, a thick low cloud, the spray of a jet of water, or merely smoke produced at C or on a terrace D. The arrangement of the place may already accomplish half the miracle, to such a degree that chance could produce it in full without anyone’s help or intention.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-one-cross-apparatus.png]
Original diagram of a luminous cross projected onto smoke, Volume II, p.208. References B, C and D correspond to the preceding explanation.

[C21-33 | source PDF 220–222]
How could miracles fail to fall into discredit in an age when all have been explained, performed and surpassed, when the most plausible appearance vanishes on close inspection? I said in my first volume that places where poverty is most widespread, where neither the fertility of the soil nor the inhabitants’ industry offers a means of subsistence, are usually the most fertile in miracles, which become the region’s sole source of relief. I shall cite the expedient of a parish priest whose meager stipend brought him close to want. He complained of his distress to a wealthy, well-provided fellow priest. “I shall get you out of your difficulty,” the latter told him, and explained his plan. These two men of God at once took a crucifix and a livre of salt. The crucifix was buried at a shallow depth, and the salt was mixed into the earth covering it. In spring, when the shepherds brought their flocks into the countryside, they noticed that the sheep came one after another to stop at the same spot, and could scarcely be made to leave it. Everyone knows that salt is an excellent fertilizer, and the sheep also found a special flavor there. Then they scratched the ground. At last the shepherd came over and scratched the earth too… One can imagine the signs of the cross and the devotions when he saw the image of the Redeemer! Filled with wonder, he ran to the village, and in an instant the entire village knew how Jesus Christ had just made his image known through the pious instinct of a flock of sheep, the most innocent of animals. Priest, cross, banner, candles, holy-water vessel, churchwardens, cantors, choirboys, women and girls, young and old: all hurried in procession to dig up the crucifix that had lodged beneath the turf, no one quite knew how, but by the will of God. It was carried in triumph and deposited with great ceremony in a chapel set aside for it in the poor church. What the village had learned in an instant, all the surrounding districts learned within a few days. Everyone came to bring an offering. The bishop was among the first—every bishop is shrewd. Taverns and inns were established, and prosperity spread through the district.

[C21-34 | source PDF 222–222]
I could tell any number of miracles, each more piquant than the last; but nowadays everyone performs them… Let us return to Vienna.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-one-tailpiece.png]
Original closing vignette: a radiant cross amid clouds, Volume II, p.210.

Original notes

[C21-N1 | source PDF 201–201]
The Riga ascent took place on August 18 (September 1, 1804), at six in the afternoon. The barometer read 28 pouces 3 lignes on the ground, and 23 pouces at my greatest height.
Balloon dimensions: diameter, 20 French feet; circumference, 62 feet; surface area, 1,240 feet.
Capacity: 4,135 cubic feet. Plus: 4 pouces of air.
Weights: balloon, 47 livres; basket, 30; M. Robertson, 110; accessories, anchor, etc., 8. Total: 195 livres.
Twelve barrels that had previously contained Malaga wine were charged with 500 livres of water, 110 livres of iron nails and 150 livres of acid per barrel.
Filling began at one o’clock and ended at half past five.

Editorial record

The opening retains Robertson’s account of censorship, his accusations concerning Garnerin, and his national and nutritional judgments as historical author text. Carmagnole is the revolutionary jacket in this clothing context. Fiat lux is retained as the Latin command Let there be light.

Devoir une fière chandelle means to owe someone great gratitude, literally a fine candle. The literal candle wording is retained because the joke turns on the stolen candles. The source reports a confession after whipping; that circumstance is retained.

The printed meal name on PDF193 reads lachale, rather than OCR luchale. The source form is retained without silently substituting a modern Russian term. Boulimie here is rendered ravenous hunger, not assigned a modern eating-disorder diagnosis. The printed meals at two and four o’clock and Riga population50,000 are retained.

Kotzebue’s three-paragraph quotation is retained in full, including the speculative uses of balloons and the accusations against Garnerin. The quotation is source text reproduced by Robertson, not a newly verified account. Faublas is retained as the literary name in the source.

The Riga ascent note preserves the printed dual date August18/September1,1804 and all measurements. The surface-area entry is printed as feet without square; the additional capacity entry literally reads 4 pouces d’air. Neither ambiguity is silently repaired. The weight sum47+30+110+8=195 matches the print. The barrel ingredients apply per barrel, as the printed brace shows.

The printed tower height on PDF213 is425feet, not OCR420. Other historical figures and comparisons are retained: Vienna250,000inhabitants; libraries Vienna300,000volumes/12,000manuscripts, Paris800,000/72,000; Strasbourg tower4meters below the Great Pyramid. These are Robertson’s reported figures, not modern measurements. The source chronology of Kara Mustapha’s death is also retained without silent correction.

Ferdinande non te deseram means Ferdinand, I will not abandon you. The Latin is retained because the next sentence jokes about the crucifix having received an education.

The printed angel anecdote reverses the participants. It first identifies the archduke, later JosephI, as the recipient of the angel’s warning, but on PDF217 calls JosephI the surprised listener and Augustus the consenting host. The translation retains these printed names and the preceding no more distrust rather than inventing a consistent narrative. This is an anecdote Robertson reports, not independently verified history.

The chapter synopsis prints Migue; the body repeatedly prints Migné. Both source forms are retained. Robertson’s assertions about the cross, Jesuits and Constantine are presented as his polemical explanation, not established provenance or a tested reconstruction. Museum Kirkerianum and Polosk retain the source forms.

The cross diagram on PDF220 has the references B,C,D used in the adjacent text. The opening is12–15pouces. The standalone D in raw OCR belongs to the illustration and is not a paragraph. The claim that salt is an excellent fertilizer is retained as source text without adopting it as modern advice.

Volume II, Chapter VI

The first hot-air balloon in Vienna. Blanchard’s two failures in three attempts. A letter dated from the sky. The surroundings of Vienna. The emperor’s good nature. A beautiful but useless sail. M. Degen’s vocation. M. Mayer’s unfortunate attempts. Revenge in verses. A double parachute. A phantasmagoria room. The Temple of Night. Fine thunder. A moving rotunda. The tremophore. An overturned carriage and an improvised inn. The frontier Cossack gentlemen. A blow from the barrier. The king of Mittau. A northern landscape in January.

[C22-01 | source PDF 223–223]
Count Cobentzel had not lulled me with an empty hope. The emperor’s reply arrived eight days after the minister’s letter on my behalf had been sent. It graciously granted my request, and I could now devote myself to preparations for an early ascent.

[C22-02 | source PDF 223–224]
It was nearly thirty years since the Viennese had enjoyed this beautiful spectacle. Even then, what they had seen rise in 1781 was a hot-air balloon, not a gas balloon. Here is its story. This was the first balloon experiment carried out in the city, undertaken by a man named Gaspard Stuver. He built his hot-air balloon seventy-two feet long, of canvas lined with stout paper glued in place. He gave it the shape of a cylinder with a cone closing each end. Three other people were to ascend with him, and did accompany him: Daniel Hagmuller, Michel Schmaltz and Georges Hammersmith. For their basket they took a Danube boat, arranged as shown in Figure A, which depicts this immense machine.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-fig-a.png]
Figure A. Original drawing of Stuver’s hot-air balloon and its Danube-boat basket, Volume II, p.212.

[C22-03 | source PDF 224–225]
The travelers embarked all the more resolutely because they had no intention of leaving the hot-air balloon to itself, but meant to keep it captive with a stout rope. This rope, strong enough to require a force estimated at 1,800 livres to break it, nevertheless proved insufficient. Scarcely had it become taut when it snapped. The aerial vessel shot away with the speed one can imagine, exposing its passengers to the greatest danger. The jolt was so violent that the boat tipped entirely to one side. The fire spilled onto the canvas and set it alight. Fortunately, the travelers had taken the precaution of bringing water and long poles with large sponges attached to their ends; they extinguished the incipient blaze. The journey was short. The machine descended, skimming a large framework prepared for a fireworks display, brushed the trees of the Prater and came down on the sand on the other side of the Danube.

[C22-04 | source PDF 225–226]
Ten years after this experiment, in 1791, Blanchard arrived, preceded by an immense reputation, to offer the people of Vienna, in all its majesty, a spectacle of which they had seen only a first sketch. Surely one of the spectators’ greatest pleasures is to see the aeronaut rise serenely into the air, without the reassurance of any tether fastening him here below by which, once he has departed, he could be recalled to earth; to discern no trace of labor or human workmanship in the invisible, almost magical power that carries him; and finally to contemplate him amid the clouds, beneath which he first floats before soon disappearing into them. Blanchard’s hopes and efforts were disappointed. He made his arrangements badly, and it is generally agreed that of all his experiments, this was the one in which he committed the most errors and blunders. The enormous crowd grew angry, and the peaceful Austrians came close to being driven to sedition by hydrogen gas rather than by the wind of discord. It is said that he owed his life to the king of Sweden, or to the prince of Ligne, who took him into his carriage. He failed a second time. At last, more fortunate on his third attempt, he took flight and escaped far from the scene of his first reverses. One of the most piquant details of this excursion is certainly one I learned by chance. On that same day a M. Jonatasio found the following letter, ornamented at each corner with a yellow ribbon and a black ribbon, each a foot long. Both the address and the letter were written in pencil. The address read:

[C22-05 | source PDF 226–226]
TO HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR AND KING.

[C22-06 | source PDF 227–227]
The letter ran as follows:

[C22-07 | source PDF 227–227]
Sire,
“A feeble mortal, who is now floating through the air, dares to lay his homage at the feet of the greatest and most magnanimous of kings. It is to Your Majesty’s royal kindness that I owe my existence and my present heavenly enjoyment! Overwhelmed by so many benefits, I humbly prostrate myself before Your Majesty, whose most submissive and respectful servant I am,
BLANCHARD.”
In the air, July 6, 1791.

[C22-08 | source PDF 227–227]
The letter was never delivered to its addressee. This negligence on M. Jonatasio’s part would have been inexcusable had Blanchard’s irregular conduct not aroused keen indignation despite his misfortune. Even so, that is an explanation rather than an adequate justification for this near breach of trust.

[C22-09 | source PDF 227–228]
From what has just been read, the Viennese could not yet boast of having seen a well-executed ascent when I obtained permission to offer them the spectacle. Moreover, I appeared before an entirely new generation, whose knowledge of a balloon’s ascent had come only through accounts handed down. I can say that court and city, nobility and people, showed an equal eagerness to see it. Receipts of about 25,000 francs bore witness to this keen enthusiasm.

[C22-10 | source PDF 228–230]
The experiment took place on October 29 at the Prater, in the presence of the grand archdukes Charles, John and Louis, Archduke Ferdinand, the nobility and as great a public gathering as one can imagine. This ascent was truly magnificent. My eldest son, then a very young child whose charm Kotzebue had noticed at Riga, was to accompany me. He was already sitting happily beside me in the basket when M. de Cobentzel came to implore me to leave him on the ground and carried him away in his arms. I departed at four o’clock to universal acclamations. Within moments the Danube, stretching out its course and unfolding its distant windings and picturesque banks before my eyes, seemed to draw its banks closer together and narrow its bed. The islands scattered through it, perhaps a hundred in number, drew together and were outlined for me only by thin white strips, like a charming silver embroidery on a single island. As I rose, I had let my eyes roam delightedly over the green amphitheater of the Schönbrunn gardens and the building with the pretty name Gloriette on the hilltop; then, two leagues away, over the other imperial palace at Laxembourg, which contains the Castle of Caprices—a name I could very well apply to my flying palace, despite the sail M. Éberlé had had fitted to it, as will be seen. I had also tried to distinguish the rocky terrace of the Camaldolese monastery, a rock that seems to threaten to block the Danube’s course should it break from its base, and which the prince of Ligne owned then or has owned since, for my memory is unreliable on this point. I had immediately recognized Mount Kahlenberg, a very popular Sunday excursion, which takes an hour to climb. There lived M. Jonatasio, to whom I owed Blanchard’s letter dated from the sky. From my excellent vantage point for surveying the countryside, I made out, four leagues away, the town of Baaden, so well known for its mineral waters and called the Bristol of Austria. At half past six, before I could discover whether Vienna’s three thousand lanterns could be seen from such a distance, since they had not yet been lit, I came down six leagues from the city in the Tressdorfer valley. I returned to Vienna the following day.

[C22-11 | source PDF 230–230]
I did not have the honor of seeing Emperor Francis at this ascent, though I was assured he had come, simply in a calash, without getting out. The simplicity of tone and manner of Austria’s imperial family has been remarked upon as perfectly compatible with the nobility of a line that needs neither arrogance nor haughtiness to show that it occupies a throne. Thus, on the eve of my experiment, while I was at the fireworks maker M. Stuver’s, I saw the emperor’s carriage stop at the door. He got out and came in person to ask, with as much easy good nature as any ordinary citizen of Vienna, whether my balloon departure was still fixed for the next day.

[C22-12 | source PDF 230–231]
I have mentioned a sail that did nothing to prevent my balloon from obeying the wind with perfect docility. Here is why I had fitted it. When my planned aerial journey was announced, a M. Éberlé, director of the imperial collection, published certain ideas for steering that seemed impracticable to me. By simple theoretical considerations I easily demonstrated the uselessness of his methods, including the assistance of a large sail, which he considered highly effective. I hesitated all the less to demonstrate its uselessness in practice because unfurling the sail seemed likely to add to the beauty of a balloon journey. It did indeed produce a wonderful effect on the public. Had I wished, I could have let them believe that the balloon resisted the wind and followed only my will. Unfortunately, the opposite was happening. The wind caught the sail full on and drove it still faster in the direction it was blowing. How could one tack and turn the sail crosswise without the resistance of water beneath one’s feet to bear against? Steering would remain a distant prospect if we had no more ingenious and rational theory for achieving it.

[C22-13 | source PDF 231–232]
The newspaper controversy on this subject disturbed the repose of an honest, peaceable watchmaker. He regulated the march of time; he thought he could similarly master space and began imagining mechanisms. Throughout his stay in Vienna he kept close to me so that every day he could share his dreams. A talented man and skillful mechanic, M. Jacob Degen made attempts that were unsuccessful but not contemptible. His example was imitated in France, and other projects were tried, more or less devoid of merit. On page 7 my readers may see a model that, among these attempts, at least rested on some principle. It was a sort of combination of kite and balloon. An inclined plane, moved right or left by a rudder, was to provide resistance to the air and a center of action for the aeronaut. Experiment belied the apparent promise of this invention, of which I shall give a fuller description in due course, along with the other methods that have remained unsuccessful to this day. Degen’s unfortunate experiments in Paris will be related in the same place.

[C22-14 | source PDF 232–232]
I cannot pass over in silence the signs of good faith and trust I received from the Viennese and the government on the occasion of this experiment. The authorities allowed me to sell my tickets in advance, and the inhabitants all obtained them in this way.

[C22-15 | source PDF 232–235]
Delighted with this first success, and with the purpose of my journey half achieved, I had only to succeed equally well in a parachute descent to fulfill all my hopes. I intended to offer this spectacle shortly after the ascent. The effect of individual vanity, encouraged by national vanity, forced me to postpone it, much to my displeasure. A certain Mayer took it into his German head to repeat before his fellow citizens the spectacle that had just aroused such lively interest among them. He went about proclaiming that a German was quite as capable as a Frenchman of flying to glory—his expression, not mine. It is true that the French were then flying to glory in every sense of the phrase, but their exploits were not taking place in the clouds. The young men of the French embassy and some of our other countrymen made a matter of national honor, in rivalry with young men of Viennese society, of the outcome of M. Mayer’s attempt, which two academicians encouraged and assisted. For my part, his plan greatly vexed me, for it delayed my return to Russia by a month or six weeks. I therefore went to see M. Mayer. I offered, if he would let me carry out my parachute descent first, to leave him my pipes and barrels and oversee the filling of his balloon. He haughtily replied that he had no need of my help. What I had heard of him gave me little confidence in his ability; events justified my expectations. The day so eagerly desired by his countrymen arrived. I was still in bed when one of the police chiefs came to beg me to go to the Prater for a moment to help M. Mayer, whose balloon would not fill, probably because the gas was escaping through some unnoticed little hole. To oblige him, I did indeed stop up a very small hole, entirely innocent of the loss attributed to it. Had the gas taken as long to enter the balloon as it would have taken to escape through such an opening, filling could have begun at Christmas and been ready by the Assumption. I was pressed to remain until the operation ended, but persisted in withdrawing, unwilling to risk sharing responsibility for a failure easily foreseen from the arrangements already made. The experiment did indeed fail completely. Not only could M. Mayer not think of leaving the ground; he could not even produce enough gas to make his balloon stand upright. The young men of the French legation were greatly amused by his predicament and celebrated their triumph, as is always done in France, with songs.[C22-N1]

[C22-16 | source PDF 236–236]
Shortly after this defeat I obtained permission to offer a parachute descent, a daring experiment even more deserving of curiosity than a simple ascent. But patriotism dampened enthusiasm. A grudge was held against me, as though I should be responsible for an ignoramus’s reverses. My audience was far smaller than at my first experiment.

[C22-17 | source PDF 236–236]
On this occasion I yielded to the entreaties of a young man who had made himself my pupil and begged me to let him make his debut before what was still a large assembly. He later occupied a seat in my aerial stagecoach several times. I had devised an improvement to the parachute. The very small basket was surrounded by a sheet of silk, which, when the aeronaut dropped, was also to unfold, present its surface to the air and thus form a kind of second parachute. Although the weather was unfavorable for the experiment, spectators were not lacking and would have been more numerous still but for the sulking I have mentioned.

[C22-18 | source PDF 236–237]
I successfully directed all the preparations. M. Michaud—for that is my pupil’s name—had only to take his place in the basket and let himself be carried off by that lifting force which is so easily explained yet never ceases to be wonderful. Applause and acclamations rose on every side. The traveler remained in sight. He had already risen nine hundred feet above the ground when a cannon shot gave the signal to detach himself from the balloon. He cut the two ropes that held him to his carrier, allowing it to continue its wandering flight alone through those lofty regions. For him, the law of gravity called him downward. His fall was rapid at first, but the two parachutes soon opened simultaneously and presented a majestic sight. In a few seconds the aeronaut had crossed the space separating him from the assembly and found himself gently set on the ground a short distance from his starting point in the Prater, amid the liveliest expressions of satisfaction.

[C22-19 | source PDF 237–238]
The spectacle had seemed extraordinary. It brought me compliments from every quarter and rich gifts from the court. My kind of parachute was highly praised both for its visual effect and for the increased safety it offered. It was made of taffeta, only twenty feet in diameter, and weighed only twelve livres. It was readily understood that in a fire it could provide real assistance to someone on an upper floor if flames blocked every other escape. By opening it sufficiently before leaping, one would be certain of reaching the ground almost unharmed.

[C22-20 | source PDF 238–239]
Delighted with the Viennese and the pleasure I had given them, I nevertheless hurried, after this ascent, to prepare for departure, so as to reach Saint Petersburg before winter was too far advanced. Besides, I had been unable to secure the only theater in which it would have been suitable and profitable to give phantasmagoria performances. Unable to perform it, I could at least see it and become a spectator of my own invention. M. Melzer’s knowledge of the optical improvements to which I owed the success of my phantasmagoria had prompted this wealthy silk manufacturer, an enlightened amateur, to gather a large company at his home and pay homage, he said, to the foremost phantasmagorist. The effects answered neither this enthusiasm nor my expectations. I found his art very limited: his entire power extended only to making objects grow or shrink. He nevertheless assured me that he possessed a tube for setting them upright. I had to conclude that he did not know how to use it. This tube later passed into the hands of M. Maëlzel, an ingenious mechanic who purchased M. Melzer’s collection but could make nothing of it.

[C22-21 | source PDF 239–240]
It should not be concluded from what I have just said that the Germans are not highly advanced in the art of producing brilliant, mysterious, fantastic results by combining effects of light. On the contrary, few nations excel in it as they do. Their dreamy character, tender souls and mystical imagination naturally incline them toward such inquiries. One of the curiosities of Vienna that best demonstrated this disposition and this knowledge of effects was the Temple of Night at Schenau, belonging to Baron de Braun, director of the Vienna theaters. In the middle of a beautiful garden, a spacious enclosure offered, with a charming illusion, that half-darkness of night which the moon illuminates rather than dispels. Stars studded the firmament and, with their glittering brilliance, heightened the enchantment of this nocturnal half-light. To produce the moon effect, I would first make a cavity of a few feet in the building’s dome, or in the upper part of the room where the effect was to appear. Its side facing the public would be round and fitted with white frosted glass. Then, four or five pouces away and parallel to it, I would place a lens convex on both sides, with a focal length of twelve to fifteen pouces and a diameter of twelve pouces. Its large diameter makes this lens difficult to manufacture, but the perfection of the experiment depends on its perfection. As for the stars, they project outward and are made of copper: gilded half-spheres borrowing their reflected brilliance from the moon and other lights placed in alabaster vases. The whole produces a complete illusion and an enchanting impression.

[C22-22 | source PDF 240–241]
If one wished to reproduce not the calm of a beautiful night, but a stormy night in a building of this kind, nothing could contribute more to the illusion than M. Michel’s thunder. This M. Michel traveled from city to city, producing the loud crashes of thunder, its cracklings and its rolls, more or less muffled, more or less close at hand. One was astonished at so close a resemblance to nature, and I do not doubt that timid people would have been as frightened as by real thunder. His method depended on the action of a wheel A, twelve feet in diameter and one foot wide. This one-foot space between the two frames C is enclosed with stout horse parchment, and some sixty iron or lead balls B, the largest the size of an egg, suffice to produce sounds of such intensity. Here is a representation of the machine as I saw it.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-fig-1.png]
Figure 1. Michel’s thunder wheel. References A, B and C correspond to the preceding explanation, Volume II, p.229.

[C22-23 | source PDF 241–242]
Turning to effects that can be obtained especially in bright sunshine, I shall mention M. Posch’s camera obscura, particularly the one he had planned. Here is its representation. AA in Figure 2 represents four compartments or four small camera obscuras. External objects are projected onto the tables B through the objective lenses C. The whole framework abcd, forming a rotunda, is of wood and turns on the pivot D. The public is admitted into the four rooms, and the movement imparted to the entire rotunda brings all the objects outside before the spectators’ eyes, passing successively through the different points of the horizon. Everything surrounding the building appears in turn through the lenses and charms the senses with an eloquent variety of views. Such a room has yet to be built. M. Posch had nevertheless begun it, intending a base twenty feet in diameter. This method of moving the public and making the spectators themselves mobile has been used by MM. Daguerre and Bouton in the Diorama in Paris.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-fig-2.png]
Figure 2. Posch’s proposed rotating camera-obscura room, Volume II, p.230. The original reference letters are retained.

[C22-24 | source PDF 243–243]
After this account of illusions, allow me to add the description of an instrument I saw in Vienna, which likewise served only for amusement but might be put to a more serious use. An observer of everything connected with the general laws of nature and physics, I have always paid particular attention on my travels to methods that may concern health, and to inventions useful to our needs no less than those serving our recreation. The instrument I wish to discuss, and of which I give a drawing, might well be called a tremophore; we shall see why. This machine, intended solely to produce sounds, is entirely unknown in France. Imagine a strong steel or iron rod II, bent and rubbing against a wooden drum MC dusted with resin. The crank E sets the large wheel A in motion, and an endless cord BD accelerates the rotation of the drum C. The cylinder’s rotation excites a very strong vibration, producing a deep, imposing sound.

[C22-25 | source PDF 243–244]
Thus far this instrument seems to concern acoustics alone. But could the healing arts not derive great benefit from it? The rod’s vibration is so pronounced that it spreads to everything around it. Let a person touch it or connect with it by holding the cord OP, and a trembling will be felt throughout the whole animal economy. Must not the blood, the fluids that nourish the human body, the muscles and the nerves experience either a displacement or a beneficial shaking in a host of obstructive ailments? Electricity, back in fashion in Paris as I write, of which some surprising effects are cited while many failures are doubtless passed over in silence, acts through a fluid radiating only toward surfaces. Can its action compare with the shaking that the tremophore sends through every part of the human body’s inner organization?

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-tremophore.png]
Original drawing of the tremophore, Volume II, p.232. Its labeled parts correspond to the preceding description.

[C22-26 | source PDF 245–246]
After these various descriptions, I think I may leave Vienna without taking leave of a few other, less-known practitioners. I am not returning to Saint Petersburg by way of Riga. I take another route, through Poland. But in winter, especially the winters of those regions, one is less inclined to put one’s nose out of the carriage window than to bury one’s head in one’s furs. I would therefore say nothing of the journey, reserving it for the more favorable season in which I made it a second time, had I not been brought to a sudden halt by a small accident near Bialistock. The markers that trace the roads and guide the postilions across these entirely white plains, covered with three or four feet of snow, were missing in places. Our driver, obliged to proceed at random, took us in the most classic fashion into a ditch, where the carriage overturned. Picture a performer, his wife and their two children, with all their luggage topsy-turvy, climbing out through the carriage door to sink knee-deep into snow. Not a dwelling in sight; help had to be sought four leagues away, and it was growing late. We had only one course: to climb back into the overturned carriage, huddle together like mice or rabbits and spend the night in this improvised inn. Outside the cold was severe, but we were warm in our little shelter. The postilion had hurried to the nearest village. Daylight surprised and illuminated us through the carriage door, which served as our floor, so that we might have thought ourselves in one of those little Paris garrets whose windows are almost parallel to the sky. Had there been a château nearby, the adventure would doubtless have had some romantic outcome. But I must confess that it ended very prosaically: the carriage was righted, and fresh horses took us without further mishap to the first posting station.

[C22-27 | source PDF 246–247]
Having first arrived in Saint Petersburg by sea, on my return to Russia I became acquainted with certain indispensable formalities for those entering overland. The first precaution is to have a podaroschna, or passport for obtaining post horses. This does not dispense with a second passport from the civil governor. In 1805 the horses cost two kopecks per verst. That was very little, and even the substantial supplements needed to move the carriage, which the two or three small horses allowed under the tariff could not have shifted, did not make the changes of horses as expensive as elsewhere. It is, moreover, strictly forbidden to take Russian coin out of the country, so it is essential to obtain Dutch ducats before departure.

[C22-28 | source PDF 247–247]
Besides the memory of my tumble into the snow, this overland journey left me with the impression made by our entry into Polangen.[C22-N2] There is something gloomy and solemn about it. The sound of keys, the rumbling of the carriage over the drawbridge, then the turning of the gates on their hinges and the shooting of bolts awaken misgivings, a kind of involuntary terror and fear of captivity. The Cossacks guarding this frontier are not, moreover, the most amiable and polite people one may meet on the road. I was rather inclined to ask them for a little more courtesy toward someone who had come so far to bring their country advances in civilization still unknown among them. But I reflected that more than one generation of Cossacks would yet pass over Muscovite soil before they themselves made any use of the voltaic pile or the electrometer.

[C22-29 | source PDF 248–249]
It seems that the guarding of all Russia’s frontiers is entrusted to these escapees from the banks of the Don. Foreigners generally complain of them, and few writers have not had some dissatisfaction to express on the subject. In small towns or district centers, it is usually regular troops one encounters at the barriers. They take your podaroschna with an air of importance, though very often they cannot read it for the simple reason that they do not know the letters of the alphabet. They make you wait two hours nonetheless. Do not suppose they have some formality to perform. Not at all. They merely wish to give you leisure to observe that an impatient traveler may end his martyrdom by offering a ruble. If you persist in failing to guess the secret of this wait, beware of resentment like that of which I nearly became the victim at the entrance to a sort of small town. The barriers are great wooden beams on pivots, raised at one end by a counterweight at the other. Scarcely had my passport been returned when the postilion, tired of the long delay, urged on the horses. The carriage started, but as we passed beneath the barrier, a terrible crash sounded above my head. The carriage recoiled; its roof was smashed.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-barrier.png]
Original illustration of the frontier barrier, Volume II, p.237.

[C22-30 | source PDF 249–249]
The soldiers had let the great bar drop. The damage could not be undone. What would complaints have achieved? A considerable increase in the time we had already lost. We had to swallow our anger. But does it not seem to the reader that this form of barrier, dangerous in itself, belongs only to an enslaved people, a people of serfs whom their masters can crush without attaching much importance to it?

[C22-31 | source PDF 249–251]
We had not forgotten this adventure when our attention was diverted on the road by the sight of some old carriages bearing royal coats of arms. They seemed to have been discarded in the open, with no fear of the weather. We were approaching Mittau, the first Russian town where one finds a governor and has one’s passport endorsed. The postilion, whose Russian I did not understand and who understood my French even less, managed through gestures to tell me that the king of Mittau, the count of Provence, later Louis XVIII, lived nearby. These carriages by the roadside served as a sort of signboard, informing travelers, especially French ones, that there was royalty here to be honored. Homage must have been very flattering, but even simple curiosity had its value for the Bourbons, who surely feared nothing so much as being forgotten by France. They doubtless hoped that travelers returning home would repeat the details of their reception, some witty or pleasing words, some of those phrases in which the loss of power and exile make one so eloquent when speaking of liberal ideas and devotion to the people’s interests. In this way one could remain alive in certain imaginations and be less unknown at the return for which hope is never abandoned. I had been at the inn only a short time when a Frenchman, curled, powdered and thoroughly perfumed with the ancien régime, who might have stepped out of the château of Versailles one morning in 1789, came to offer all the services that countrymen can render one another abroad. He told us that Louis XVIII’s residence was near the town; that he would introduce us there if we wished; and that being French would ensure us a warm welcome, especially if we had news from France to communicate. I repaid these offers with suitable thanks but did not take advantage of them. I was in too much of a hurry.

[C22-32 | source PDF 251–251]
This new journey of five hundred leagues had been longer and more arduous than the previous one, and above all more tedious. We reached Saint Petersburg overwhelmed with fatigue and eager, as may be imagined, to enjoy rest in good beds. We had ourselves taken to the Hôtel de Bordeaux, near Isaac Square, the foremost hotel in Saint Petersburg. But there my earlier observation about the lack of comforts in these hotels was confirmed. No consideration was shown for our long hours without sleep, and we could not obtain sheets before daylight. The proprietors were not accustomed to disturbing their own rest to hasten that of travelers.

[C22-33 | source PDF 251–252]
I had so far seen Saint Petersburg from only one side, the one it shares with all great cities. I still had to know it under the entirely distinctive aspect given it by winter’s severity. Then the whole city rests on a floor of ice, and the surface of the Neva differs in no way from the streets, which, like the river, are traversed by swift sleighs. The noise and movement of wheels have entirely ceased. Fixed motionless on runners, they no longer help the carriages, which glide rapidly along. To anyone who has not seen it before, these swift, peaceful journeys are a highly picturesque sight. And since at this season all the nobles live in the city and display every luxury they can muster, this is the favorable moment to choose if one wishes to find the liveliest, most brilliant and most splendid scene a great northern city can offer.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-two-tailpiece.png]
Original satirical vignette with its printed French caption, Volume II, p.240. The translated caption follows.

[C22-34 | source PDF 252–252]
Fly to glory, my friend M***!

Original notes

[C22-N1 | source PDF 235–235]
These gentlemen circulated in society the verses that follow. They are rather like the song of Good King Henry: not brilliant in style, but fairly well felt. If anywhere one may write careless yet agreeable French verses, it is among the Germans, especially when writing songs:

Following Robertson’s example,
Mayer wants to rise by balloon:
But it is beyond his sphere,
Well then,
To leave the earth,
You know what I mean.

About to honor his nation
With a fine ascent,
My God, how he flounders!
Well then,
He stays in the mud,
You know what I mean.

Is it his fault, you will ask,
If his spirit lets him down,
And if his head is empty,
Well then,
Of a precious fluid,
You know what I mean.

Yet take comfort, Viennese:
Another time you will see him
Buy some other spirit,
Well then,
To pay his debt,
You know what I mean.

[C22-N2 | source PDF 247–247]
One of the frontiers of the Russian Empire.

Editorial record

PDF223 clearly prints1781 for Stuver’s ascent and nearly thirty years for the elapsed period; PDF225 then prints1791 and ten years later. These dates and intervals are retained, alongside the prior chapter’s twenty-year claim about Blanchard. They conflict with the surrounding narrative chronology and are not silently harmonized.

Blanchard’s letter, its address, signature and July6,1791 dateline are translated in full. The alternative rescuers king of Sweden or prince of Ligne are retained as the author’s uncertainty.

The source’s passenger names,72-foot balloon,1,800-livre rope strength,25,000-franc receipts, October29 ascent,4:00departure,6:30landing and other distances are retained. FigureA on PDF224 and opening rulePDF223 have been extracted from retained original masters and inspected. The page7 cross-reference is to the original volume pagination and requires final edition link reconciliation.

The four-stanza satirical song is retained in the original author note with all24lines and repeated refrains. Esprit is rendered spirit to retain a possible verbal link between wit and a volatile substance; the translation prioritizes sense and stanza structure over invented rhyme. The printed faux bon is retained in the French transcription.

The20-foot,12-livre parachute and900-foot detachment height are the printed figures. The passage proposing parachutes for escaping building fires is Robertson’s historical claim, not modern safety advice. The consecutive source images contain no separate double-parachute drawing here.

The moon lens has printed focal length12–15pouces, not OCR n–i5; separation4–5pouces and diameter12pouces are retained. Michel’s thunder-wheel referencesA,B,C and Posch’s rotunda referencesAA,B,C,abcd,D are preserved. The rotunda’s20-foot base and its uncompleted status remain explicit.

The tremophore referencesII,MC,E,A,BD,C andOP are retained exactly as printed and checked against the original drawing. The medical proposal and theory of electrical fluid are historical speculation by Robertson, not validated treatment claims.

PDF246 prints plancher, floor, for the overturned carriage door through which daylight enters, although the following comparison is with a garret skylight. Floor is retained with this discrepancy disclosed. The source passport form is podaroschna on bothPDF246and248, not OCR poclaroschna.

The original donkey-and-balloon vignette onPDF252 includes the caption Vole à la gloire ! mon ami M***, absent from raw OCR. The caption is recovered and translated in blockC22-34, with M*** preserved. The image and caption return to the earlier satire of Mayer; no masked name is expanded.

Volume II, Chapter VII

The baptism of the Neva. Why the Russian hills did not last in France. Women’s finery on Nevsky Prospect. The pleasure and art of sliding downhill. Sleighing. Pig markets. Blocks of ice. The Nativity of Jesus Christ and the apostles’ blond wigs. The exile of the Jesuits. The New Year’s ball. Alexander judged by women. The marriage of the prince of Saxe-Weimar. A party given by Barras. Grand Chamberlain Nariskin. M. Rospini’s dancer. M. Maëtzel’s bass player. Rapid heating.

[C23-01 | source PDF 253–254]
At the time of my return to Saint Petersburg, precisely during the Christmas festivities, a ceremony was performed in the city that was strange enough to deserve description, and has doubtless been described in some book: the baptism of the Neva, or blessing of the waters. I shall not investigate the origins of this ceremony, at once religious and military. Its purpose is surely to pay homage to the river, the source of so many benefits to the capital. On January 6, all the troops in full dress, with the czar at their head, gathered opposite the palace on the Neva, whose waters lay imprisoned beneath an icy vault several feet thick, capable of supporting all the armies of Europe. What astonished me greatly—sensitive to cold as I am, almost a southerner under this harsh sky—was to see these soldiers, and the sovereign himself, brave a cold of twenty-five degrees for several hours, their bodies enclosed in plain woolen coats, without fur or any precaution against the temperature. Indeed, I several times noticed the emperor bareheaded. One must know Russia’s climate, and all the care its inhabitants take against its severity, to appreciate how natural my surprise was. It is true that this was a religious observance, and religion among the Russians retains all its primitive fervor. France is no longer the place where people freeze for the love of God.

[C23-02 | source PDF 254–255]
The empresses and the entire court watched the blessing of the waters from the palace windows. The clergy, in great pomp and preceded by their archimandrite, advanced in solemn procession and descended onto the ice. The archimandrite entered a temple supported by columns, erected on the ice itself, where an opening had been made so that the high priest could reach the waters, hidden from view throughout the city. Formerly, I was told, the archimandrite baptized children there. This baptism resembled that of Achilles, except for the plunge: holding them by one foot, the priest made their heads touch the surface of the water. I was assured that one day, having let a child slip from his hands, he turned around without embarrassment and said with great composure, “Davaï drougoïe: give me another.” For this story, however, I do not undertake to furnish documentary evidence.

[C23-03 | source PDF 255–255]
This thoroughly national ceremony ends with exercises and a general review. It is not the only honor paid to the Neva. When the river has shed its winter covering and once more reveals its current, which is to become so peaceful again around April 15, the time of the breakup, the governor of the citadel alone has the right to take possession of it first and reopen navigation. He does so by crossing the river to bring the sovereign a golden cup of fresh water, which the emperor drinks at once. All this plainly springs from the same cause that formerly obliged the doge of Venice to wed the Adriatic.

[C23-04 | source PDF 255–256]
This Neva, which I have just shown bearing a pious crowd, may be seen every day in winter becoming the scene of the liveliest pleasures, a plain for thousands of swift vehicles. Winter is unquestionably the most agreeable season in Russia. It offers forms of amusement entirely unknown elsewhere, foremost among them the ice hills, so much discussed in France since attempts were made to imitate them with hills of planks. That experiment had only a brief life; a few years of popularity were enough for the fashion to pass. Several reasons may be given. First come the dangers, which all too many examples have given grounds to fear, and which do not exist in Russia; then there was the absence of the attractions of climate, season and national custom. In Saint Petersburg people amuse themselves, so to speak, to shake off the cold. Without all this winter activity, the Muscovites would have no choice but sleep or the table.

[C23-05 | source PDF 256–257]
Once the cold has firmly set in, one has the advantage of an even, unchanging temperature. Neither rain nor fog disturbs one’s outings. After about a fortnight of snowfall comes a clear sky that remains constantly cloudless. The desire to go out is then irresistible, and fashionable society flocks to Nevsky Prospect. This street, a league long and lined with trees on both sides like the boulevards of Paris, is the sole meeting place of good society between one and three o’clock. The luxury and richness of dress displayed there would be incomprehensible in any other country. Yet Russia, abundant in furs in its European territories, lacks none in the Asian regions of its empire. On every side, therefore, the avenue offers foreigners the spectacle of sable so gracefully paired with pink or blue satin, and chinchilla making so rich a border for white or scarlet velvet. A single outfit then sometimes cost as much as nine or ten thousand rubles—eighteen or twenty thousand francs. How many heads of peasants does it take to meet such an expense? To match this splendor, the most magnificent sleighs compete in elegance, speed and luxury. Swift as lightning, they glide over the ice, adorned with bronze and gold, their drivers covered in bearskins and the horses that draw them decked with ornaments and harnesses lavishly glittering with silver.

[C23-06 | source PDF 257–260]
As for the amusement of the hills, although generally intended for the common people, it is very entertaining if one enjoys it somewhere other than the public hills. To build them, enormous blocks of ice cut like stone slabs are laid side by side and one above another. Then, on a very cold night, water is poured into the gaps. It freezes instantly, making all these pools into one smooth, icy surface. Later I shall give some details about M. Saucerotte, then the emperor’s dentist, whose welcome to his French compatriots has always been so obliging. It was to him that I owed my first acquaintance with the pleasures of this exercise. He always knew how to arrange a delightful outing for his guests. One day after breakfast he offered to take us to enjoy it at Kaminostrow, on the hills Count Strogonoff had built. We all climbed into sleighs and set off at a gallop, for that is how sleighs must go when one travels to Krasnoï-Kabak, meaning the Red Tavern, or to Petershof and other established resorts, like the Champs-Élysées, the Bois de Boulogne, Saint-Cloud and the other places around Paris. We climbed about two hundred steps of a wooden scaffolding and reached a small platform overlooking the whole gleaming slope. We were seated on narrow little boards about two feet long, fitted underneath with iron runners, and sent hurtling down with a push in the back. In those first moments of such rapid descent, one experiences a genuine fall rather than a slide: a kind of tickling around the navel that makes one double up, a sensation unbearable to some, but to which women in general doubtless owe the delicious little fright that gives such zest to this pleasure of tumbling downhill. Skill and practice are useful in this exercise. One must know how to steer and follow a straight line as far as possible. Special leather gloves are fitted to one’s hands, swallowing the arms up to the elbows so that one seems to have boots on one’s hands. If you cannot steer your sledge skillfully, it carries you now right, now left, and buries you in the snow banked three or four feet high on either side of the hill. At other times you spin like a top; the sledge following close behind strikes yours and carries you along, seated or overturned. With skill, on the other hand, you prolong the momentum given to your vehicle and travel a considerable further distance over the level surface of the river. It brings you to another scaffolding, which you climb before setting off again along a parallel course in the opposite direction. In this way one may prolong this Muscovite recreation to one’s heart’s content.

[C23-07 | source PDF 260–262]
In Russia winter is not only the season of pleasure but also that of business. The cold, which in our countries lengthens distances and makes communication difficult, brings places closer together and eases communication in the north. Long journeys and large shipments are deferred until this season. It is around the fifty-fifth degree of latitude that one can take full advantage of sleighing, a rapid means of travel without wheels. In the southernmost parts, sleighing generally begins toward the end of October. From every part of the empire, the provisions that supply Saint Petersburg and the great cities then begin to pour in. The longest distances are covered with incredible speed, saving half the transport costs and half the journey time. The richness and abundance of the markets at this season are unequaled. Fish, game and butcher’s meat arrive from the most distant places without any fear of decay. No one who has lived in Saint Petersburg can have failed to visit the markets in this season out of curiosity, or to notice the picturesque sight of these piles of pigs, stripped of their bristles, cleanly scraped and white, raised on their hind legs and arranged upright in a circle, sometimes seeming to embrace, sometimes to stretch out their arms toward one another. One sees the same thing on a smaller scale in private courtyards, where meat left in the open air awaits the cook’s axe, which each day cuts off whatever he needs. There is no fear that domestic animals will make the least attempt on the frozen carcasses. Vegetables are stored in cellars and sold there by men. In general one sees few women in Russian shops, whether because the men distrust their better halves or because they are strangers to that refined courtesy which sets the charms of the opposite sex against the purchaser’s delicacy. In Saint Petersburg even the shops selling fashions and French trifles, which women alone know how to display to advantage, are scarcely left to them. As for these vegetable sellers, I will say that they have sometimes given me evidence of the coarseness prevailing among the classes of this still little-civilized people. I have seen them carry impudence and brutality so far as to display, on certain occasions, the lustful instinct of some species of monkeys at the Jardin des Plantes.

[C23-08 | source PDF 262–263]
Among the Russians’ supplies, the ice used to cool their cellars deserves mention. In winter one travels over the Neva, stripped of its bridge of boats, its surface so dirtied by pedestrians that it looks more like earth than ice. The illusion would be complete were it not for the large quantities of enormous pieces of ice cut into blocks. Except for their transparency, one would take them for great dressed stones, and a foreigner might think they had been placed there for some nearby building project, for they are no less than three or four feet thick. They also present a phenomenon pleasing to the eye: patches of greater transparency caused by air bubbles, at first a finger’s breadth wide and shaped like Batavian tears, which grow wider with the cold and might pass for inlays. Everyone has heard of the famous palace Catherine had built from these four-sided blocks of ice, which so long defied the sun’s gaze. But the sun is a powerful czar, and through its intervention the palace eventually dissolved into water. To detach these blocks, the muzhiks use a saw exactly like our stonecutters. One man alone suffices to bring them ashore. He lowers the end of his sledge into the water, draws the floating block onto it with a hook, and then has only to whip his horse.

[C23-09 | source PDF 263–265]
The blessing of the waters is not the only superstition, or curious remnant of old religious customs, that I witnessed at this season. At Christmas the feast of the manger was also celebrated with a splendor calculated to attract a great crowd. Men, women, children—everyone indeed—rushed toward the Jesuits’ church on the avenue, crowding in to witness the mysterious Nativity of Jesus Christ. Yet one may say that when Our Lord came into the world, there could not have been a tailor in the whole Holy Land capable of dressing the Savior or any of his apostles as they all appeared at this solemnity. Picture, on a low circular platform, thirteen wax disciples, from Saint Peter to Judas Iscariot, ranged on either side of their master, all in blond wigs and silk clothes. For fear of error in so grave a matter, I would not venture to say which looked more like a marquis, a count or a baron. But blond wigs in Bethlehem! Blond wigs on John, Mark and Matthew! Far from wearing wigs at that date in the Christian era, the pious evangelists must still have been with their wet nurses. The English, very profane as everyone knows, therefore laughed at the ceremony with mocking impiety, asking the sacristans how far below freezing it was in Bethlehem on Christmas Day, whether the three kings wore fur-lined coats, and whether they had arrived by droshky or balloon. But the English reputation for unbelief is well enough established. The Jesuits are much better Christians; they alone had the right to exploit this ceremony. After sermons more enticing than usual, having sent clouds of incense over the multitude and more sparingly perfumed the holy company, the reverend fathers had the consecrated moneyboxes presented to the piety of the faithful. These collections filled them several times. I do not know whether this festival still survives; at least no one can have forgotten it. I have reason to believe, however, that Emperor Alexander eventually forbade the waxy apostles to receive these all too numerous visitors. What leads me to think so is that this sovereign was obliged to prohibit the building of new churches and convents in Moscow. At that time the latter city was said to contain forty times forty churches.

[C23-10 | source PDF 265–266]
In Saint Petersburg, as in the other cities of Europe, the Jesuits remained true to their zeal for proselytizing and their system of seduction. Always eager to recruit souls for God, a dozen years ago they had managed to insinuate themselves into many Russian families and subjugate the minds of several women. They had already persuaded them to leave the Greek religion for the bosom of the Catholic Church when Alexander grew angry. Highly skilled at winning women to a worship that was neither the pope’s nor the archimandrite’s, he doubtless wanted no converter but himself, and exiled the Jesuits. The fathers of cunning withdrew to Polosk, expecting everything, as was their nature, from time and their persevering zeal. Russia had, after all, become their promised land when all Europe had expelled them. They had even made themselves useful in education. Why did they go too far?

[C23-11 | source PDF 266–268]
The religious practices I have described do nothing to diminish the splendor of the worldly festivities held at the same seasons, and are far from making manners more austere. Above all the other festivities I place the magnificent New Year’s ball at the imperial palace. Three to four thousand tickets are then distributed on the emperor’s behalf to people of the prosperous classes; foreigners of some standing are not forgotten. Nothing more brilliant can be imagined than this ball, which one may attend in costume or not, as one pleases. Here above all one could form an idea of that worship of Alexander by his people which I have mentioned, and of the passion, if I may call it so, that he inspired in all the women. Whichever way he went, they rushed into his path, and a glance was enough to send a shiver of pleasure through the woman favored by chance or beauty. In Alexander’s eyes beauty had its rights in every station. Even a commoner might obtain the honor of dancing with Alexander, who at twenty-five, his age then, was indeed worthy of inspiring a tender response to his gallantry. At the first ball I attended with Madame Robertson, I was nearly crushed. I did not know the dance, the polonaise, or rather promenade, a kind of galopade, as it is called today, and just as sweeping. As soon as the emperor passed with his partner from one room to another, there was an unimaginable movement and commotion, a sort of feminine maneuver. All the ladies immediately shifted their positions to find themselves in his path. One was pushed, squeezed, thrust aside and almost knocked down by this weak and fragile sex, as we call it; I could then see how much energy curiosity and the ambition to please can give it. If proof were needed of the impression he left on women’s imaginations, a rather curious translation of a few Latin words, based on their resemblance to French, would supply it. I had had occasion to paint Alexander’s portrait and had written on the pedestal: Magnus in pace et in bello. Madame Robertson congratulated me on this inscription, saying it was easy to understand, and translated it thus: “The magnificent page of the beauties.” I may add: Ab unâ disce omnes.

[C23-12 | source PDF 268–268]
A failure to take precautions can be fatal after these gatherings, where the crowding of so many people raises the temperature above twenty-five degrees while outside it is twenty or twenty-five degrees below zero. On leaving, one need only fail to find one’s servant and fur-lined coat in time to suffer a fatal effect. In this way I lost several compatriots, among the dearest to me of the French residents of Saint Petersburg.

[C23-13 | source PDF 268–269]
I remember witnessing, in the same year and season, the celebrations for the marriage of the prince of Saxe-Weimar to Emperor Alexander’s sister. A very sufficient reason will always prevent me from forgetting that this wedding took place in winter: that day the cold was at least twenty-five degrees, and I was nearly frozen when the fireworks were set off. The table at which the emperor dined with the whole imperial family could accommodate a hundred and thirty places. All the ministers and members of the diplomatic corps were among the guests. The emperor sat beside the empress at the end of the table. What most caught my attention as an observation of manners was this: at dessert, a vessel containing preserves was presented to the emperor, who used a silver-gilt spoon. The vessel was then offered to the empress, who used the same spoon, and both spoon and vessel passed in turn to every guest. Thus nearly three hundred lips had subjected the spoon’s surfaces to fresh ablutions by the time it returned to its starting point.

[C23-14 | source PDF 269–270]
This banquet certainly seemed splendid and well arranged, yet it could not in any respect compare with one I had attended as a guest in France some years earlier. Director Barras was the host, and entertained marvelously: he was celebrating the ninth of Vendémiaire. An astonishing profusion of the costliest crystal and porcelain, lavished on more than four hundred people, made the party remarkable. Madame Bonaparte did the honors, and several times during the night Barras sat beside her on a sofa, doubtless to compliment her grace. We did not leave until five in the morning. Clearly simplicity and austere modesty are not compulsory attributes of every republic, since the brilliance of a republican dinner thus eclipsed all the luxury of an autocrat. I owed the favor of enjoying this splendid party to Madame Chevalier, whose son[C23-N1], as we saw in the first volume, was then entrusted to my care.

[C23-15 | source PDF 270–271]
If there was amusement at court during the winter, diversions were no less plentiful among the great lords and nobility and in the houses of wealthy merchants. I received numerous invitations and went to share in all these pleasures. I should reproach myself if I did not mention first the attentions lavished on me by Grand Chamberlain Alexander Nariskin. No party was given at his house without my being invited, and all his parties were charming. Few Russian nobles have done as much honor to their nation as this good prince, affable toward all the French, for whom he had a particular affection and whom he protected. He was director of the theaters, but his income did not always suffice to pay his debts, which the emperor undertook to discharge on several occasions. At least his was a fruitful extravagance, benefiting everyone fortunate enough to approach him. He also had the reputation of being a great eater and was truly a lover of good food and a real connoisseur. Oysters said to have cost no less than three francs apiece were sometimes served at his table.

[C23-16 | source PDF 271–273]
Indeed, all the pleasures that the severity and length of winter can suggest followed one another at M. Nariskin’s, where M. Frogère shone especially through his gaiety, his sallies, his ingenious stories and a genuine talent for acting. Happy the man, whoever he may be, who in Russia knows how to bring diversion into company, put life into society and enliven it by his presence, his jokes—what am I saying?—even by his grimaces! He is certain to be admitted to every drawing room and to open every door, even those of the court. More than that, people hasten to welcome him, so urgent is the need for varied diversions in this icy climate, where the harshness of the weather virtually imprisons the inhabitants for seven months of the year. Imagine, then, the success of the French, generally so agreeable through their lightness of temper, lively conversation, resourceful wit and even the inconstancy of their desires. The smallest trifles sometimes enjoyed an inexplicable vogue, often owing to the most insignificant advantage. I wish to mention several that had a brilliant success. A young man attached to the embassy of the court of Vienna had brought back a little figure about fifteen pouces high, painted with great taste. It was passed from hand to hand in company as a new curiosity, though no one could quite guess its purpose. It came back to the young man, who casually placed it on his knees and allowed time for it to be forgotten. Conversation began to languish, and having nothing more to say, people started looking at one another. Suddenly all eyes turned toward the young man, or rather his toy. What was the little puppet doing? It was moving by itself, performing various motions. The life of dead frogs obeying the electric fluid for the first time did not astonish Galvani more. There were cries of admiration. Still greater was the excitement when the little cardboard man danced to violin and piano, less well than Vestris, admittedly, but not without charm. Soon it obeyed every movement of a wand held by the young magician. That was enough to entertain the company for the rest of the evening. Everyone wondered why and how. They investigated at length and guessed the truth ten times without believing it, all the more because the skillful operator deliberately sowed doubt. Yet nothing could be simpler.

[C23-17 | source PDF 273–274]
Take some good, stiff cardboard and cut it into a dancer of the size I have indicated. The head and arms should form a single piece with the trunk; only the legs, moving at the knees, and the thighs at their joints, are to be joined with a simple silk thread. Once our actor has thus been brought into being, do you wish to produce the pleasing play of his various movements? Fasten a black silk thread to your left knee beforehand. Your right hand, resting carelessly along the opposite thigh, holds the other end. The thread is invisible because of its color. You can easily suspend the puppet by the two points of its hat, and then need only move the thread in your hand to send it into the most laughable capers. What amazes spectators when the figure is handed to them is that they find neither wire nor magnet, and therefore cannot imagine what keeps it suspended or enables it to move. Yet dexterity is needed, as in everything, and the painter’s skill is no less essential.

[C23-18 | source PDF 274–274]
I repeat that when it was new, this little puppet trick produced ten times more effect than serious things that had cost far greater efforts of imagination. M. Rospini of Vienna reproduced the same amusement in a perhaps more ingenious way. The smaller figure, carved in the round in wood, represents a harlequin dancing on a rope. As with the previous figure, only the thighs and legs move. It is placed in a little theater two feet high, two and a half feet wide and just as deep. The curtain rises. A person seated behind, hidden by the theater and easily able to reach around it, holds the two ends of the balancing pole that enter the grooves at the sides. In this way he gives his little mannequin whatever movements he pleases, making it touch the elastic rope now with its feet, now with its knees, and sometimes putting it into a more comical posture. One cannot imagine how entertaining this spectacle is.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-three-harlequin.png]
Original illustration of Rospini’s harlequin theater, Volume II, p.263. The balancing pole and side grooves correspond to the preceding explanation; original labels A and B are retained.

[C23-19 | source PDF 275–276]
The Parisians have recently made use of this amusement. In M. Susse’s well-known shop in the Passage des Panoramas one now finds very ingenious puppets, among them that of M. Maëlzel, the Viennese mechanician. In the middle of the little theater I have just illustrated, he places a small copper bass player and makes it perform a cello concerto, very skillfully indeed! One must see this rival of M. Baudiot, a member of the Mayeux family by its build, give itself over to every kind of grimace and contortion to negotiate the difficult passages, wielding its bow with the liveliest speed. People burst out laughing, split their sides and applaud all the more enthusiastically because, while being amused, they enjoy excellent music—for the cellist is a skillful artist, if one has such a performer available. Someone hidden beneath the theater pulls the operating thread in time with the beat and modulations. This very simple toy alone made M. Maëlzel’s entire success in New York. Perhaps I shall be thought to dwell somewhat on trifles, but I declare that their financial results are no trifling matter. Thus the same M. Maëlzel’s chess player and mechanical trumpeter, such costly and important pieces, could not rival a scrap of cardboard. The smallest marionette supports the man who carries it about, while genius sometimes starves.

[C23-20 | source PDF 276–277]
Since I am discussing the Russians’ inventions for passing their long evenings, I wish to tell how necessity devised an ingenious escape from a difficulty that seemed insurmountable. We were at a country house near Saint Petersburg. After dinner, M. Frogère’s presence suggested putting on a comedy at once. But it was the depth of winter: how could well-fed guests endure a theater where it was twenty degrees below freezing? On the other hand, heating the room would take the entire rest of the evening. This inconvenience was about to rule out the play, to general disappointment, when the master of the house suddenly announced a brilliant idea and undertook to bring the room to a suitable temperature in less than half an hour. He immediately ordered the peasants of his estate to shut themselves inside it, pressed tightly against one another until it was full. As many were put in as it could hold, and the doors were carefully closed. Before long the poor muzhiks were sweating and suffocating for their lord’s greater pleasure. In less than half an hour they had imparted all the heat needed to the air within. They were hurried out, without any fear on their behalf of chills or chest inflammations. The room was perfumed; otherwise, since all these men wore sheepskins, it would have retained a certain goatish odor that may be imagined. The whole company entered applauding, into fragrant air whose temperature had been raised by fifteen degrees.

Original notes

[C23-N1 | source PDF 270–270]
Now Baron de Conan.

Editorial record

The source specifies a cold of25degrees without naming a scale. No conversion has been invented. January6 and April15 are retained as printed without calendar harmonization.

The child-baptism anecdote is explicitly hearsay and Robertson expressly declines to supply evidence; both reservations are preserved. Davaï drougoïe is retained in the author’s transliteration with his translation.

The original têtes de paysans is rendered heads of peasants, retaining the author’s pointed connection between fashionable expenditure and peasant ownership. Nevsky Prospect is the standardized English name for perspective de Newsky.

The source says lacs, pools, in the ice-hill construction passage. Retained without silently substituting blocs. The historic author’s claim that the Russian slides lack danger is retained alongside his account of collisions.

The wax display is explicitly described as thirteen disciples besides their master, despite the conventional number twelve. Thirteen is retained. The forty times forty churches and Catherine attribution for the ice palace also remain the author’s claims, without silent historical correction.

Source-image readings correct OCR Folosk to Polosk and Peiershof to Petershof. Robertson’s anti-Jesuit satire and offensive class/national generalizations are translated as author text, not adopted as editorial descriptions.

Magnus in pace et in bello means Great in peace and in war. Madame Robertson’s Le magnifique page des belles is a deliberately false translation based on sound, rendered literally in English. Ab unâ disce omnes means From one woman, learn them all; the feminine unâ is part of Robertson’s joke. Both Latin expressions remain in the text.

The marriage is explicitly placed in winter by Robertson. His stated130place settings and nearly300lips are retained. Barras’s celebration is printed9vendémiaire, without a year; no date has been supplied or silently corrected.

PDF275 prints Maëlzel, whereas the synopsis prints Maëtzel. The historical surname remains Maëlzel in the body. The source’s violoncelle in the explanatory parenthesis denotes the human cellist, not the puppet or instrument; the hidden thread operator is separately identified.

PDF276 clearly prints20degrees of frost in the unheated theater, not OCR10. PDF277 says the temperature was raised by15degrees; this is translated as a rise, without silently turning it into a final temperature of positive15or supplying an unstated scale. The forced confinement and subsequent expulsion of the peasants are preserved.

Volume II, Chapter VIII

Count d’Hédouville. M. de Renneval. M. Saucerotte’s family. Stray dogs. Russian baths. River bathing at Wilna. Impressions in the snow. Precautions against the cold. Curious signs. Crows in the streets. The muzhiks’ clothing. The painter Orlosky.

[C24-01 | source PDF 278–279]
Having mentioned M. Alexander Nariskin’s palace as the meeting place for every new pleasure, and the place where I found the greatest charm, I must also speak of the gatherings at the French ambassador’s, Count d’Hédouville. From him too I received the warmest welcome, and I frequently spent evenings at his house, eagerly accepting the goodwill he showed toward the French. M. d’Hédouville cut an impressive figure. He was stout and might have been handsome in his youth. His face was less remarkable for liveliness than agreeable for its constant expression of consideration and kindness. His bearing did not lack dignity, and his soul was wholly French. One strong taste of his, shared with many other notable men, was the pleasure of carpentry. I encountered him twenty times in his workshop, wielding the plebeian jointer as successfully as the diplomatic plane, as keenly occupied in smoothing the rough places in a piece of wood as those in a commercial agreement, and taking his greatest delight in making treaties and window shutters at the same time.

[C24-02 | source PDF 279–279]
I often saw the French consul general, M. de Lesseps, at his house; he was always there. Elsewhere I shall speak of this very able representative, with whom I had closer and more prolonged relations. M. de Lesseps had sailed with the unfortunate Lapeyrouse on his last voyage, and had left the expedition on the coast of Kamchatka, which he crossed to return to France with news of the navigator.

[C24-03 | source PDF 279–280]
At that time I also had occasion to meet M. de Renneval, who has since risen high in the diplomatic hierarchy but was then merely an embassy secretary. I need not praise either his wit or his learning. These qualities struck everyone and amply compensated him for the physical advantages nature had not bestowed. His amiable character and manner, and his musical talents, made his company most agreeable. Madame d’Abrantès says in her Memoirs that he was very absent-minded. That is commonly the habit of people whose heads are not empty enough to be filled with all the nonsense talked in society. Idle conversation has little hold on a well-stocked mind, and it is then quite usual to seem to listen without hearing.

[C24-04 | source PDF 280–281]
Nor shall I neglect to record a remembrance here of the Messrs. Saucerotte, one of whom was the emperor’s dentist in Saint Petersburg, while the other practiced the same profession very honorably in Moscow. I believe there is no Frenchman who has not had reason to speak well of these two brothers, long established in Russia and, as it were, doing the honors of the country for newcomers with perfect cordiality. It was they who acquainted newly arrived Frenchmen with all the sights and amusements and whatever else it might be important for them to know. The position of M. Saucerotte of Saint Petersburg also enabled him to render services he never refused. Most Frenchmen considered themselves exiles in this distant country—voluntary exiles, it is true, but necessary to make their fortunes, in the hope of returning afterward to enjoy them in France, in their dear native land. The Messrs. Saucerotte did not fail to fulfill that destiny. Having arrived in Russia almost without resources, they returned to their own country with a splendid fortune and sent members of their family to succeed them, who are advancing still more rapidly along the same path.[C24-N1]

[C24-05 | source PDF 281–281]
At this same time M. Rhode, first violinist at court; M. Boyeldieu, composer; M. Didelot, ballet master; the painter Caraffe; M. Baillot, the celebrated violinist; M. Lamarre, a greatly gifted bass player; and Mademoiselle Philis Andrieux, leading singer at the French theater, were flourishing in Saint Petersburg and gathering a great deal of glory—and, I may also say, a great deal of money.

[C24-06 | source PDF 281–283]
We sometimes left Count d’Hédouville’s very late. One night when the evening’s amusements had carried us far into the night, I was returning home at great speed. My sleigh must have struck some member of the canine race asleep in the street. At once the barking of fifty or sixty dogs filled the air. They hurled themselves in a pack against my vehicle, and without the speed of my horses I should certainly have been devoured. The reader is doubtless surprised to find so many dogs together. He should know, then, that in Saint Petersburg dogs enjoyed a peculiar right of citizenship. These animals lived in packs throughout the city, belonging to no master, subsisting on alms, so to speak, and whatever fortune scattered in their path. If I dared, I would tell what they live on in Lisbon, where we shall find them again in wandering tribes, camping in squares and at crossroads. But in Lisbon their food depends on a custom unworthy of a civilized people, one that would scarcely be believed, especially in Paris, where the smallest filth thrown from a window incurs a fine. In Saint Petersburg, however cold it may be, one encounters these herds of dogs with their bellies in the snow, living in the open without shelter and apparently thriving. I took it into my head to ask a Russian why so many hungry, useless and troublesome guests were tolerated. He gave me a rather singular reason. “Peter the Great,” he said, “was determined at all costs to gather living creatures in his great city. Dogs, cats, muzhiks—everything suited him, provided it was alive. He was not particular then about the kind of inhabitants. Since then the people have multiplied, and so have the dogs, and no one has yet thought of limiting the growth of this double population, although the human race has produced offspring in sufficient numbers.” I quote this original idea; as for the true reason one might put in its place, I do not know it.

[C24-07 | source PDF 283–284]
One can readily believe that these dogs are thievish as Bedouins and lazy as monks; accordingly, they do not always get a full meal. They are no better cared for in other parts of Russia, where they nevertheless render great services. In Siberia, Kamchatka and Irkutsk they are harnessed to sledges, and travelers have no other conveyance. The animals run fast, finding their way unerringly to the next station, where their only food is dried fish, without even crusts of bread, for bread is very scarce throughout that vast country. These poor creatures, comparable to the nags at ill-equipped posting stations, always feel the hunger that is never fully satisfied. On the high roads it is even important to guard against the voracity of these fish-eaters. If a call of nature forces the traveler to get down, he had better hurry, for the hungry pack surrounds him and displays the filthy instinct of Saint Anthony’s companions, with an excess of gluttony for which even the latter offer no example.

[C24-08 | source PDF 284–284]
Such meanness in feeding dogs is natural in a country where food for useful domestic animals is no less scarce than food for people. At the time of M. de Lesseps’s journey through Siberia, the cows there ate only dried fish, which gave their milk an unbearable taste resembling tar.

[C24-09 | source PDF 284–285]
One is no longer surprised to see animals sleeping in the snow in Russia, despite the severity of the temperature, when one knows that the Russians themselves plunge their whole bodies into it on leaving scorching bath rooms. Russian baths and the customs connected with them are among the most remarkable of this nation’s still curious practices. One day after dinner the young men of the French embassy offered to take me on an excursion of observation to a place they did not name. I promised to be docile and followed these young scatterbrains. Soon we entered an enclosure whose door was open to all comers. Lovers of painting know how Albani usually depicts Beauty, the Graces and the countless Loves his palette created. Well, in just that guise there appeared before my eyes—greatly surprised, I admit—a considerable number of women who had come out from the interior where the bathing took place and were receiving the impressions of the air over the whole surface of their bodies. Adam would doubtless not have accepted all these Eves indiscriminately, for some were rather old, and our presence prompted them to a sour tone and marked displeasure. The young women, on the contrary, seemed not at all alarmed. Our admiration paid tribute to their charms, and they received it as though accustomed to such gifts.

[C24-10 | source PDF 285–286]
I know that statements of this kind by certain travelers, who have gone even further than I, have been contradicted. Some have asserted that in several towns one sometimes saw a complete mingling of the sexes in the same steam rooms or baths in running water. Such accounts have wounded the pride of Russians who, traveling abroad, are better educated than their compatriots, or who, having lived only in the cities where civilization is most advanced, have not seen everything in their own country. I can at least attest that at Wilna, while walking along a public promenade beside the little river Wilika, I saw large groups of women, veiled only by the water in which they stood, bathing ten paces from groups of men whose clothes, without exception, also lay on the bank. I should go beyond the scruples of a truthful narrator if I claimed to have noticed divers at these gatherings, which it is my duty to consider innocent until proved otherwise. But I must add that the water did not seem more than three or four feet deep.

[C24-11 | source PDF 286–287]
It is also known that Russians generally do not bathe by immersion. They love bathing passionately, and establishments of this kind are very numerous among them. The serf does not deny himself this enjoyment and obtains it very simply and cheaply. When his oven is hot, he lies on its vault and sweats profusely, or else puts himself inside it after taking out his bread. In the towns the procedure is more elaborate. Steps rise gradually across the whole width of the room, from floor to ceiling. Opposite this sort of amphitheater, an oven two or three feet high is heated until the brick turns red. Several buckets of water are then thrown in quick succession onto this glowing brick. The water vaporizes, instantly flooding the whole room with burning steam. The heat of the successive layers increases from bottom to top, so that each person, ascending step by step, stops at the temperature he can endure. That of the highest steps is such that one cannot bear it for long, and after a few minutes an egg held in the hand would be brought back cooked.

[C24-12 | source PDF 287–288]
It is well known that after bathing Russians habitually scourge themselves with birch branches, or have the bath attendants perform this service for them. This custom contributes no less than frequent bathing to the early fading of women’s breasts and the withering of their flesh. Almost all of them, once their very earliest youth is past, retain only soft flesh and slack forms, and generally even have damaged tooth enamel. One can imagine how powerfully this steam must act, as people grow accustomed from day to day to experiencing it at greater intensity. A special constitution is certainly needed to withstand its repeated action, for they use it at least two or three times a month. Crowds generally flock to the baths on Saturdays. Soldiers are required to undergo these weekly ablutions, from which none would dare exempt himself. The common people rush there just as eagerly, and indeed they need to, for this is all the care they take of their persons, the whole of their cleanliness. It is what rids them of vermin.

[C24-13 | source PDF 288–289]
Speaking of baths, I recall a very ignorant Russian doctor who offered a rather coquettish lady of my acquaintance an infallible recipe for keeping her muscles firm. He advised her to take salt baths, on the very specious grounds, worthy enough of a Muscovite, that salt preserves raw meat. The cunning doctor forgot that meat softens as it is preserved in this way. Did the lady believe him? Indeed she did, and became a very prettily shriveled little person.

[C24-14 | source PDF 289–289]
As a natural philosopher, I have tried to account for the ease with which Russians, drenched in sweat, leave the hottest steam to roll naked beneath the snow without suffering the slightest mishap, or even the harsh sensation one would expect them to feel. The body is so thoroughly imbued with heat that, in my opinion, all that exceeds the natural warmth of the blood can be taken from it with impunity, without any danger; and it is this excess that is first released on contact with the snow. One of the bathers’ great pleasures, moreover, is to make a complete likeness of themselves in the snow, casting themselves, as it were, in a hollow mold.

[C24-15 | source PDF 289–289]
Let us note another thoroughly Russian custom connected with bathing: newlyweds go to the baths with great ceremony before consummating their marriage. One sees them pass with the entire wedding party, each carrying under one arm the bundle of birch intended for his gentle scourging.

[C24-16 | source PDF 290–290]
Those who shudder at the thought of this sudden passage from the heat of the steam rooms to the icy cold of the snow would be greatly surprised to learn all the precautions Russians take against the ordinary winter temperature of their climate. Thanks also to these numerous precautions, eagerly adopted by foreigners, the severity of a climate so unlike ours becomes easier for French people to bear than the same season in Paris. At least the ailments it so frequently produces—coughs, colds and catarrhs—are rarely seen there, and I can affirm that I caught cold no more than twice during my seven years in Russia.

[C24-17 | source PDF 290–291]
Everything that can protect the interior of a dwelling from the icy air outside is brought into use. Windows have double casements, all their joints stopped with tow and strips of paper; double doors are found everywhere too. The stove flues can be closed inside the rooms and again at the top of the building. To keep heat from escaping through the smallest opening, the covers of these flue dampers are covered with sand. Heat is thus concentrated indoors without any loss. This temperature allows people to dress as lightly inside their houses as in Paris. But if one wishes to go out, one prepares to brave the cold with a generous supply of muffs, fur-lined coats, caps padded with cotton wool and well-furred boots.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-four-rustem.png]
Original portrait of the artist Rustem in winter clothing, Volume II, p.279; the printed Dubosc signature is preserved.

[C24-18 | source PDF 291–291]
Let the reader look here at the portrait from life of a talented artist, M. Rustem of Wilna, and he may say he has seen a Russian in the streets of Saint Petersburg. I still find him very bold to let his entire nose emerge from his fur-lined coat and not have his eyes half buried in his headgear.

[C24-19 | source PDF 292–292]
Add to these precautions the constant consultation of two thermometers, one outside and the other indoors, to learn the difference in temperature, dress accordingly and even avoid venturing out unless compelled by indispensable business. Yet the muzhik, the common man, needs no thermometer to estimate roughly how hard it is freezing or is about to freeze. The noise of pedestrians and carriages tells him reliably. When it is twenty degrees below freezing, passing feet make a crunching sound audible from some distance; carriages seem to run over a very solid floor, and there is even a kind of repeated cracking. Forster, who traveled through Siberia by order of Empress Catherine, says that at forty degrees below zero the earth becomes so cold that it cracks and splits with a loud noise.

[C24-20 | source PDF 292–293]
Various other signs reveal the intensity of the cold in Russia. At one time it is crushed ice flying like dust, or smoke that meets resistance as it escapes the chimneys, rises only a little and seems to fall back in a curve onto the roofs. At another it is the horses’ breath transformed into icicles hanging from their nostrils, or the varied festoons we notice around the basins of our fountains transferred to long Muscovite beards. Above all, it is the restlessness of the thousands of crows that live in the streets of Saint Petersburg, brazenly occupying the very middle and scarcely stirring at the approach of pedestrians and carriages. When instinct warns these birds of a harsher night, they gather in flocks of seven or eight hundred to seek a roof free of snow or warmer than those around it, whether because of its exposure or the distribution of heat inside the dwelling. Excessive cold often kills considerable numbers of them.

[C24-21 | source PDF 293–294]
Crows and dogs are not the only animals that enjoy inviolability among the Russians. Pigeons share this privilege. They live in the streets with the crows and are just as tame. The Russians take their respect for them much further: they never appear on their tables, and killing one would be regarded as a very criminal act. What can explain this veneration, if not their resemblance to the form the Holy Spirit once chose to assume? This kinship of pigeons with one of their ancestors is doubtless credited to them with some reason. It is a nobility of origin well worth any other.

[C24-22 | source PDF 294–295]
The common people and carriage drivers, obliged to live out of doors, are likewise less sensitive to this bitter cold than one might suppose, so well are they protected by the fur of their caftan. The caftan is the national dress: a sheepskin covered with blue woolen cloth for smart attire, but left as plain sheepskin for the muzhiks. This garment has the advantage not only of great warmth but also of economy and a double use. In winter the muzhik wears the wool inside; in summer he turns it outward. This is what we call a Gascon wash. Yet if the Gascon seldom changes his shirt, at least he has one, whereas the Russian common people have none. Besides the warmth of their furs, their coarse gloves and the strips of wool wound over one another around their legs down to their thick shoes of plaited rushes, the muzhiks warm their stomachs with large cups of tea, carried through the streets in copper ewers, as our sellers of coco carry their licorice infusion. In Saint Petersburg the sellers wrap their vessels in a great quantity of linen and carry them in their arms to keep the tea from cooling.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-four-driver.png]
Robertson’s driver in ordinary dress, Volume II, p.283. Robertson credits the drawing to Orlosky; the printed Dubosc signature is preserved.

[C24-23 | source PDF 295–295]
One may rely on the accuracy of the costume I offer here as an example. It is that of my esvochik, drawn by the celebrated Orlosky, whom Russia has just lost.

[C24-24 | source PDF 295–297]
To avoid returning to Orlosky, I shall end this chapter with a few details about this celebrated painter, the most remarkable and renowned of Russian painters, although he did not belong to Russia by birth. Far less known in France than in Germany, Prussia and Russia, where he was highly esteemed, Orlosky was Polish. He kept engraved in the depths of his soul that love of country which is the special characteristic of his compatriots. That says enough: he detested the Russians and did not conceal the feeling, even before his most zealous protector, Grand Duke Constantine. His talent doubtless placed him in a position to speak frankly. He was a man of colossal stature and proportions, and indeed of extraordinary strength. He used a rampart gun to perform the manual exercise. He would take one of those swords called skull-splitters, formerly intended to cleave helmets and with enormously heavy guards, and balance it with the greatest ease, supporting its very point between three fingers, two below and one above. This prodigious strength suggested making a cast of his right hand after his death. Very exaggerated feats of his strength have been reported. Here is one example: one day, after calling on Duke Constantine and failing to find him, he was invited to leave his name in writing. “That is unnecessary,” he said, noticing one of the long iron implements bakers use to remove embers from an oven. He seized the implement, twisted it into a knot with both hands and told them to give it to the prince as evidence of his visit. Indeed, scarcely had it been presented to the prince when he asked whether it had been long since Orlosky came. This anecdote seemed worth reporting; everyone is free to give it more or less credence. The only man in Saint Petersburg who could rival this Hercules, and even surpass him, was Count Orloff. Orlosky said he had several times seen him take a large nail and, with his fingers alone, twist its head and point in opposite directions to fashion it into a corkscrew.

[C24-25 | source PDF 297–298]
Orlosky’s kind of talent resembled Horace Vernet’s. In his drawings one recognizes something of the verve and boldness of the Vernets, whose horses he was said to imitate. The great reputation his work enjoyed in Russia seemed to lose much over the distance and reached France greatly diminished. It should also be noted that many drawings have been attributed to him that were not his, and that his genuine works have seldom left Russia and Prussia. He devoted his brush especially to reproducing the features of his benefactors. His passion for fine weapons was well known, and he possessed one of the finest collections of this kind. He had spared neither pains nor money in bringing together the most precious foreign arms. His abuse of strong spirits, which he drank like plain water, must necessarily have shortened his life and made his company unpleasant. I always found his manner gruff. He had married a Frenchwoman, by whom he had children.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-four-tailpiece.png]
Original dog tailpiece, Volume II, p.286.

Original notes

[C24-N1 | source PDF 281–281]
M. Saucerotte the elder has bought King Stanislas’s old château at the gates of Lunéville and is there happily completing a peaceful career.

Editorial record

The jointer/plane comparison preserves Robertson’s sustained carpentry/diplomacy joke, ending in treaties and window shutters.

The source spellings Renneval, Lapeyrouse, Rhode, Boyeldieu, Caraffe and Philis Andrieux are retained rather than silently identified or modernized. No missing given names are supplied.

The author explicitly declines to endorse the explanation attributing the stray dogs to Peter the Great. The quoted explanation and his stated ignorance of the real reason are both preserved.

Saint Anthony’s companions is the author’s indirect allusion to pigs; the traveler’s call of nature and the dogs’ feeding behavior remain allusive. His national and class stereotypes are author text, not editorial findings.

The bathing anecdotes preserve both eyewitness claims and the author’s denial of having seen divers in the mixed river groups. Wilna and Wilika retain the printed geographical forms. His medical theories concerning baths, snow, skin and teeth are historical assertions, not verified medical advice.

The portrait on PDF291/printed279 shows Rustem, not a portrait made by Rustem; the source says portrait d’après nature d’un artiste. The engraver’s signature is part of the original artwork and must be retained.

Mortifier in the meat-preservation anecdote is rendered soften, consistent with the historical culinary sense in the Académie dictionary1798, article MORTIFIER: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A5M1250 . This does not validate the author’s account of salt baths; the woman’s subsequent shriveling remains as printed.

Printed temperature values20and40degrees below zero are retained without inventing a scale. The chapter does not state one. Forster remains the source spelling; the reported journey is not silently reassigned to another traveler.

Cafetane is rendered caftan; esvochik is retained for the driver and explained here. Coco means the licorice drink explicitly identified by the author, not cocoa. The Gascon wash is the author’s joke about reversing a garment rather than washing it.

The original driver drawing is attributed in the text to Orlosky; both that engraving and the Rustem portrait carry engraver signatures to be preserved in full. The source’s spelling Orlosky is retained. His Polish birth and dislike of Russians are explicit in the original.

The iron-implement anecdote is introduced as exaggerated and left to the reader’s credence; both reservations are retained. Count Orloff is distinguished from Orlosky. Fusil de rempart is translated rampart gun, and casse-tête skull-splitter, preserving the weapon descriptions.

Volume II, Chapter IX

A journey to Archangel. Frozen noses. Manners and appearance. Summer after winter. Treacherous fine days. Birds set free. The lungs of Polyphemus. The court library. The emperor on the watch. His Majesty on an amorous adventure. The good empress. A charming swarm of young ladies. Prince Bobrinsky. God better than his saints. Sale of my collection to the Academy. A puppet and the grand duke. A four-share plow.

[C25-01 | source PDF 299–299]
In our part of the world, the slightest ray of spring sunshine inspires a desire to set out, and everyone takes flight, some to the country and others on longer journeys. In Saint Petersburg, on the contrary, it is the sight of fine hard frosts that puts you in the mood to travel. You see the sleigh ready to fly over an even surface all the way to your destination; in your mind you cover the greatest distances beforehand at an incredible speed. You leap into the carriage and, in the first days of February, leave Saint Petersburg, as I did, for example; four days later you find yourself a hundred and fifty-five leagues from the capital, at Archangel, almost at the mouth of the Dwina on the White Sea.

[C25-02 | source PDF 299–301]
A friend who was leaving and offered me a place beside him gave me the desire to make this excursion. I thought I might ascend in a balloon at Archangel and, finding myself so near the Arctic Circle, have something to say about the flattening and curvature of the poles. Seriously speaking, my friend had urged me to explore these places in the hope that I might later bring a marvelous spectacle to these distant inhabitants. Here is how such long journeys are made. The sleigh is shaped like a child’s cradle. One or two mattresses are laid on the bottom, and the traveler, wrapped very warmly in woolen blankets despite his fur-lined coat and fur-lined boots, lies down with his head on a soft pillow. The whole is covered with leather sloping like a roof from the arch to the prow, for this cradle shape is also that of a small boat. The esvochik, or driver, sits on the outside edge to guide the two horses, which always go at a gallop. I often overturned, but with a mere movement of his backside the driver righted the conveyance, and we sped on almost without noticing the accident. One usually travels this way day and night, both to make speed and to avoid expensive meals at inns. One always takes care, moreover, to bring some provisions.

[C25-03 | source PDF 301–303]
I stayed a fortnight in Archangel. It was enough time, and far more than necessary, to convince me that I should lose my traveling and transport expenses if I ever took it into my head to bring Montgolfier’s offspring there. About fifteen thousand inhabitants, almost all muzhiks, all engaged in fishing and work at sea, live there in wooden houses; I did not notice a single stone building except, I believe, the church and the governors’ house, which were built of brick. These people’s lot on earth seems to be to endure thirty-two to thirty-four degrees of cold on the Réaumur thermometer and frequently to have their noses frozen—which means it is not always wise to put one’s nose out of the window. It is quite usual, on meeting an acquaintance in the street, to warn him that his nose is frozen. This does him a service, for in that condition one must keep away from the fire; snow alone can remedy the accident, if applied to the affected part with pressure but without rubbing. When the nose begins to burn, it is the sign of recovery. Here, more than elsewhere, people feel the need for company, and hospitality is the foremost virtue of the north. Without the pleasure of conversation and gatherings, good heavens, what would one do in a country where one does not enjoy three hours of daylight, where in winter the sun rises at half past ten to set before three, and where the ground remains free of snow for only about fifty days of the year? Must one’s whole life be spent asleep? In June, it is true, the heavens give them a twilight so bright that at midnight one can read by the light of night, if I may put it so. Yet the fine season, the one preferred in these climates, is winter, because it offers inexpensive means of coming together. Then one sees the Lapps of Sweden and Norway arriving in crowds to trade. Their reindeer carry furs and other articles of commerce, as well as provisions for the market. These animals can live only in snow. I saw one in the emperor’s gardens at Saint Petersburg: it was languishing and constantly hiding in the shade beneath a bridge, its legs in water up to its belly. They cannot bear a change of climate. The general appearance of this part of the north offers nothing, moreover, to compensate the traveler for so long a journey. From the White Sea to Moscow the country is flat, and consequently monotonous. Archangel is perhaps the northernmost populous city. One wonders how people could have decided to settle in a place and climate so harsh, so little favored by nature, fit at best for bears. Let whoever wishes live there; I shall never make it my home!

[C25-04 | source PDF 303–304]
Returning from Archangel to Saint Petersburg was almost like returning to a southern country. The comparison made the latter city’s temperature seem less bitter, although the cold there had not diminished. Indeed, the change of season—and it is not spring—comes only in May. Russia truly knows only two seasons, summer and winter; the two transitional seasons do not exist there. You pass suddenly from winter to summer; it even takes familiarity not to be astonished by so abrupt a change. A few days earlier you left by sleigh over firm, compact ice; you return through mud. Then you should see the activity of the police as they remove the heaps of slushy snow: it is truly admirable. The city is cleaned as if by magic and takes on a new appearance as though enchanted. Everywhere the double doors and double windows are removed at the same time, and the casements open again. The Neva sets the ships in motion once more. Carriages are put back on their wheels, and the footmen who stood on a board almost touching the ground climb back to their high places. Droshkies, kibitkas, and calèches begin to roll again. Noise, at last, adds to the reviving activity and makes the streets livelier. A Frenchman who had arrived by sleigh and then slept for forty-eight hours would no longer believe himself in the same city.

[C25-05 | source PDF 304–305]
Yet beware the first fine days that follow a severe winter. I cannot recommend too strongly that foreigners then take precautions in their dress. One goes out lightly clad during the pleasant hours of the day, but treacherous evenings follow. When the sun has left the horizon, the climate seems to resume its harshness, and I have often found myself shivering on my return, despite my cloak, after going out in twenty degrees of warmth. Many foreigners have paid with their lives for ignorance of these changes in temperature, or for the little heed they gave to warnings. Under a very different sky, that of Spain, I later observed that one sometimes also had to consult the direction of the wind. On leaving the theater, Castilians used to tell me, “The wind that does not put out a candle kills a man.” Accordingly, whenever they leave a warm place, they have the excellent habit of holding a handkerchief before their mouths.

[C25-06 | source PDF 305–305]
At this season when everything is renewed, Russians have the custom of setting a great many birds free. Dealers pass by with large cages full of them; people buy as many as they choose to devote to this good deed and send them toward heaven with the words, “Go to God.” I have seen young people make the sign of the cross after releasing the captives. “It is to redeem sins,” my servant told me. I remain preoccupied with the idea that Peter the Great neglected nothing that might bring life to this part of his empire, which before him lacked men and animals, and that all practices of this kind are linked more or less closely to those early plans for populating it. Birds are scarce around Saint Petersburg because they find only sparse foliage and meager vegetation.

[C25-07 | source PDF 306–306]
I myself was very eager to imitate the birds and follow them into the empyrean; I too felt the need to spread my wings. Another ascent was being demanded of me, and it had to take place before people left for the country. The pupil whom I had sent up in Vienna begged so insistently to be allowed to repeat the parachute experiment in Saint Petersburg that I had to yield. This second trial of my double parachute, which I no longer need to describe, succeeded perfectly. I had merely added to the rigging a hollow oar that served as a staff for the banner and could, if necessary, be used as an oar to support oneself on the water. It could also help change the parachute’s direction if an obstacle obstructed its descent. This bold experiment caused a great sensation. I had preceded it with the ascent of a large star bearing His Imperial Majesty’s monogram at its center; an enormous eagle carrying a banner; a gigantic figure; and a taffeta globe thirty-six feet in circumference containing detonating gas. The very loud explosion of this gas in midair imitated a thunderclap quite well.

[C25-08 | source PDF 306–308]
The large balloon fell near the Tauride Garden, close to the barracks of the chasseurs and artillery. The soldiers tore it to pieces and made belts of it. I believe our soldiers in France would not have done so, and that some among them would have had the wit to know it was a balloon. As for my large figure, it represented Polyphemus. This Cyclops had frightened Ulysses’ companions no more than he frightened the peasants who saw him descend on the hill of Nevsky. At first they thought they saw a celestial being and did not dare touch him. After much hesitation they carried him, with the help of harpoons and long poles, into the church, from which he seemed at every moment to want to escape. Some remaining inflammable gas kept him upright and gave him movements that the terrified people interpreted in various ways. Some proposed chanting prayers so that God would avert the evil with which this giant from the heavens seemed to threaten them, for they were more inclined to rank him among the evil spirits than among the good. At last the boldest of the group ventured to give him several blows with a stick, and a great quantity of gas escaped. “I knew very well he was a demon!” he cried. “You see, he stinks like the devil.” Count de Strogonoff, who told me this adventure, laughed heartily at this picturesque remark. It was all the more comic when applied to Polyphemus, whose snoring Voltaire explained so comically.

[C25-09 | source PDF 308–310]
If I wished to keep to the chronological thread of the events that make up my Memoirs, I should now have to set out for Moscow, establish myself there, and then return to Saint Petersburg to make an ascent in the emperor’s presence. But I prefer to finish at once what I have left to say on this subject. When it became known at court that I was preparing to leave, the emperor, before my preparations were complete, sent word that he wished to see the effects of phantasmagoria and placed his library at my disposal to prepare a performance for him. This library is very large and contains the most precious collections. The recent removal of the Warsaw libraries following the insurrection of 1830 is merely a repetition of a measure carried out half a century earlier. Souvarow, at least, had not attacked the public libraries; he had contented himself with taking some twenty thousand volumes from the Jesuits and the convents. A single incident reveals the ignorance of those entrusted with this plunder. Some volumes were too large to fit into the crates: what remedy do you suppose they devised for this inconvenience? They reenacted the fable of Procrustes upon the unfortunate folios, and the saw had free play. Notice, if you please, that they took good care not to damage the crates. During our Revolution, Count Boutourline had also set about searching for the rarest works and perhaps priceless manuscripts of the thirteenth century. He was fortunate enough to collect a series of autograph letters from all the kings of France. Anyone acquainted with literary history knows, moreover, that Catherine bought the libraries of Voltaire and Diderot for the Hermitage library. Many of the former writer’s books bear marginal notes in his own hand. With what respect and eager curiosity I have often consulted them! How often, alone in this immense repository of the human mind, this tabernacle of the illustrious dead, have I reflected on the brevity of their lives and the endurance of their works! With what enthusiasm, I said to myself, if I had come to Russia a few years earlier, would Catherine have beheld the shades of those philosophers she loved, brought back to life by my art! They would have appeared surrounded by the fruits of their genius with which they enriched humanity, among the works that amused their leisure or increased their knowledge. Looking at the shelves, they might have thought themselves in their own studies, transported as if by a wave of the wand from Paris to Saint Petersburg, and would have wondered that their native land had not outbid the price that surrendered such precious relics to Muscovites. It was not without bitterness that I found, so far from France, these memorials that ought to be dear to our national pride. What use were they under a climate that chills the imagination and denies inspiration to genius—at least to literary and artistic genius! This priceless library is for the use of the court: that is enough to say that it is condemned to utter solitude. Courtiers have no time to waste in the company of the great men of the past.

[C25-10 | source PDF 310–311]
A few hours before the phantasmagoria performance, the emperor had Madame Robertson and her two children presented to him and lavished caresses on the children. He then went with the entire imperial family to his library, where the experiments took place to everyone’s satisfaction. I shall take this occasion to say that sovereigns lose by seeing everything in their palaces and ordering performances for themselves alone. First, they do not share in the contagious excitement of a public gathering, which accounts for half the dramatic effect of any spectacle. Nor do the actors forget the personages before whom they are playing their own. Lastly, a host of incidental circumstances, combined to heighten the impression, are then lacking, either because caution causes their omission or because the unfamiliar premises do not allow them. Nevertheless, the court was satisfied; the emperor even asked me to demonstrate my other experiments in physics. I have already said that Alexander was magnificent in his rewards; I received fresh proof of it on this occasion.

[C25-11 | source PDF 311–312]
One rather singular incident has remained in my memory. After the performance, assisted by Madame Robertson and my pupil M. Michaud, I hurried to pack the instruments I had used into boxes. I went to the far end of the library to extinguish a light placed in a large alabaster vase between two columns. What was my surprise to notice suddenly, behind a column, the two points of a hat projecting beyond its width! I leaned forward a little and recognized the emperor. I gave no sign of having seen him, but went back to tell my wife and M. Michaud in a whisper. The emperor doubtless realized that he had been discovered, or feared he might be: he disappeared. And what had been his purpose in keeping watch like this? I do not know. Was it to learn what French people thought of his court or his person? Was it for the pleasure of offering, as the mood took him, a few gallantries to a pretty woman if chance left her alone? Either conjecture may very well have something plausible about it.

[C25-12 | source PDF 312–314]
I have already said how gallant Alexander was by nature. I have seen him with my own eyes on an amorous adventure, courting like a schoolboy and amusing himself by passing beneath the windows of the beautiful Princess Nariskin, the wife of the grand huntsman. He loved this princess passionately for a long time and showered her with riches. He had had a daughter by her, whom everyone knew he idolized; she died in the bloom of youth, to her mother’s profound despair. I can picture Madame de Nariskin’s carriage stopped before the great wall on the street by the Summer Garden, hiding from passersby the Emperor Alexander on horseback, courting her through the carriage door, much as young bachelors of Madrid are depicted conversing with their ladies at the window. All the czar lacked was a mandolin. The esvochiks prudently turned aside so as not to disturb these tender tête-à-têtes, for otherwise they would have been sharply reprimanded. One day, however, I surprised him quite unintentionally. A lapse of attention by my esvochik brought me near the scene, rather like those mischievous chambermaids who think they have heard their mistress’s bell at the very moment when no woman ever thought of ringing it. I was too close to the sovereign to neglect the custom of getting out of one’s carriage in his presence; but he, little concerned for this customary homage, hastily and irritably motioned me to go on my way. Why, after all, did he not warn his subjects when he wished to remain incognito? Might it not have been the good Elizabeth who appeared in my place, that excellent empress whose great misfortune was, like the wife of Louis XIV, to adore her husband? Are not the unfaithful always those most loved? And truly, it is because they are the most amiable, if only through their love of women. When Alexander went to his open-air rendezvous, the route the empress was to avoid was marked out beforehand, and her servants were informed. Many women doubtless envied the empress’s lot as they watched her carriage pass, little suspecting the sorrows of the soul that such splendor can conceal and for which it offers no consolation.

[C25-13 | source PDF 314–315]
The empress had been very pleased with my experiments, as had the whole imperial family; and had she not watched them beside Alexander? The empress mother, Federowna, was not content merely to express her satisfaction. She wanted the young ladies of several institutions under her protection to enjoy this spectacle, and therefore sent several swarms of young people to my exhibition rooms, all dressed with elegance and freshness, all distinguished by the tone and manners of good society that a refined education gives. The eldest was not yet eighteen. How happily I applied myself to performing before them all the demonstrations that seemed to interest them! I was then the only man among them, and all the innocent attentions natural to their age were a most precious reward for the pleasure my experiments seemed to give them. What gaiety on those charming faces, what amiable freedom, what trusting souls in their many questions! Those few hours among them had the enchantment of a dream; so true is it that the sweetest and purest emotions sometimes leave the most enduring impressions. Nearly thirty years have passed since that day, whose memory returns unexpectedly to my mind, and I still picture it as one of the freshest and most cheerful of my life.

[C25-14 | source PDF 315–316]
The success of my experiments in Saint Petersburg had, moreover, inspired a desire to imitate them in society. Several people had attended them regularly and obtained from me whatever information they chose to ask for. I had reason to be pleased with all my dealings of this kind, except, however, those with Prince Bobrinsky. He was the natural son of Catherine the Great and the celebrated Orloff, whom the empress would have married secretly, had he consented, in order to legitimize their son, and who died in 1784 in a state of madness. The prince was a great lover of phantasmagoria. Not only did he attend my experiments assiduously, but his eagerness to question me about every new effect he noticed became importunate. I constantly found him dogging my steps when I was busiest, putting my obliging nature to severe tests and abusing—that is the word—my readiness to satisfy his curiosity. Once he knew everything, he set up a phantasmagoria in his palace and never invited me to see it, so that I could count on not the slightest kindness from him. Did he want to appear to have divined the secrets of my art without making use of my advice? I can really attribute his lack of consideration only to this childish vanity.

[C25-15 | source PDF 316–318]
After enjoying these entertainments in physics, which I had shown him, the emperor wished to attend one of my ascents. If in every country a sovereign’s presence brings a great gathering, one can imagine what a crowd must have been attracted by Alexander, the prince—I cannot repeat it too often—most beloved of his time. An innumerable multitude of spectators did indeed come running, and the results of this experiment consoled me for some annoyances that had preceded it. The emperor had given me permission to conduct it at the school of the corps of cadets. This school was under the special direction of Grand Duke Constantine, with General Klinger as its governor, representing the duke: very strict about discipline, very zealous for instruction, as all these intermediate officers who wish to give themselves the importance of supreme authorities appear to be. The saints are worth less than God; that much is certain. That is why General Klinger gave me an absolute order, twenty-four hours before the experiment, to remove my apparatus, which distracted his pupils. It is very easy to tell someone carrying nothing to pack up and go, but moving elsewhere with thirty or so barrels, as many jars of acid, and large pipes becomes a little more awkward. Fortunately, the worthy Count de Strogonoff came to my aid by placing the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts at my disposal. It seems, moreover, that this little mania for despotism has been handed down with the rank among the directors of the corps of cadets. Less than three years ago one of my sons suffered an annoyance of the same kind on those very premises. Two letters from the city governor were not enough to persuade the officer to revoke the evacuation order; my son, who carried the letters, was not even admitted to see him. He returned to the city governor. “What!” said the astonished governor. “He did not receive you! Take him this third letter. He will receive you, I promise you, or I shall go there myself.” Indeed, the third letter forced an audience. “Sir,” the director said coldly to my son, “you may build the Tower of Babel at the corps of cadets if you please. You are its master; the corps of cadets belongs to you.” My son did not think it necessary to use this permission to its fullest extent. For my part, I settled in the Academy’s courtyard and prepared my ascent peacefully, though in haste. It took place on July 19, 1805, and succeeded perfectly. I took my pupil up with me. We came down at the mouth of the Neva in the sea, hastening our descent; otherwise the wind, which blew violently and threatened us with a hurricane, might have carried us out to sea. Thousands of boats covered the river, so we were quickly brought back to shore.

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The desire for novelty belongs to all men, more or less, I know, according to the liveliness of their imagination or the fickleness of their disposition. Yet I would advise anyone whose success rests on the attraction of curiosity to regard it, among every people, as very changeable and very quickly satisfied. Thus the traveling performer who has only one attraction to rely upon would be wise, since he cannot change his show, to change his spectators often. Even a series of curious objects presented successively by the same person would cease to hold attention: in every country people like to see new faces. I believe I possessed the tact to anticipate in good time the warning given by deserting audiences, and I took care not to wait for my popularity in Saint Petersburg to decline before going to Moscow.

[C25-17 | source PDF 319–320]
A very agreeable proposal was then made to me on the emperor’s behalf: to buy my collection of scientific apparatus for the Academy of Sciences. The difficulty of conveying so many crates over such great distances, and the repeated expenses of transporting a multitude of such fragile objects, left me no room to hesitate. I therefore sold the collection for seventy thousand francs. This sum represented what it had cost me, including the expense of bringing it to Russia. I had had time to take the measure of the Russians and judge what would suffice to attract the public in the other cities I intended to explore. There did not exist there, as in Paris—the center of every invention, where each night in a sense prepares some new surprise for the coming day—there did not exist, I say, that succession of desires so quickly engendered by infatuation and disgust. I was taking to Moscow my balloon, my phantasmagoria, my hydraulic displays, and my picturesque mechanical theater.

[C25-18 | source PDF 320–321]
This theater, of which I have not yet spoken, certainly deserves a brief mention. Hundreds of thousands of spectators saw it with admiration in Saint Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. The characters appeared onstage with incredible ease, their movements so free that one can have no idea of them without having attended a performance. The figures that had appeared in theaters of this kind until then jumped instead of walking. My figures, on the contrary, had a wholly natural walking motion: the illusion was complete, and Grand Duke Constantine was deceived by it. What had once happened with my shadows happened again with these little three-dimensional figures. Readers may remember M. Cazalès attacking a skull with his cane. Constantine, imagining that the figures in the mechanical theater were living people seen in miniature by means of some mirror, tried to touch the glass with his sword and brought it right beneath the nose of one of the automata, which showed no displeasure whatever.

[C25-19 | source PDF 321–322]
Such were the means of success with which I set out for Moscow. I left Saint Petersburg satisfied, having spent the two years I had just passed there profitably. Certainly, in this country still new to the sciences, I might have given my studies a weightier direction and aimed at a more serious purpose. Already, noticing the light, crumbly nature of the soil in a large part of Russia, I had recalled some agricultural trials I had once had occasion to undertake. Called back to my family for a time after the French Revolution, I was entrusted with overseeing a fairly large farm belonging to my brother. Requisitions had stripped the countryside of men and horses, and cultivation suffered from this shortage. The idea then came to me of fitting two shares to the same plow. I made very imperfect trials, I admit, but they might have opened the way to useful improvements. In Russia I succeeded in devising theoretical improvements to the plow, a description of which I presented to Emperor Alexander. By order of the sovereign, the Economic Society asked me to have my model built at full size at the Society’s expense, leaving me the choice of workmen and agreeing to every expense I thought useful. But this plan, which I had considered in a moment of leisure and developed from a desire to be useful, required far more care and time to carry out than the nature of my occupations then left at my disposal. With the best will in the world, I could not make use of the success of my first trials. I ask my readers not to lose sight of the fact that the work and observations I am relating date back thirty years. Agriculture has taken many steps forward since that time; I too have taken many steps, as will be seen in what follows.

Editorial record

The stated journey of four days and 155 leagues is retained. No modern distance or route is substituted for Robertson’s claim.

The source explicitly names Réaumur for 32–34 degrees of cold on printedp.289. Its separate twenty-degree warmth onp.292 names no scale. Both readings are retained without silently assigning a scale.

The claim of less than three hours of daylight is retained alongside the stated sunrise at 10:30 and sunset before 3:00. The apparent numerical inconsistency is in the source.

The frostbite treatment, weather-health claims and statements about reindeer are translated as historical claims of the author, not as editorial medical or biological advice.

Lapps follows the historical designation Lapons; the author’s ethnic and climatic generalizations remain his own. Mougiks is rendered consistently as moujiks.

The Polyphemus anecdote is explicitly secondhand, attributed to Count de Strogonoff. The passing Voltaire allusion is retained without inventing a quotation or a bibliographic identification.

Robertson explicitly abandons chronological order at printedp.296. The 1830 Warsaw reference, half-century comparison, Orloff’s stated 1784 death, July 19,1805 ascent and thirty-year retrospection are retained as printed, not silently reconciled.

The emperor’s possible motives for hiding behind a column remain conjectures: Robertson says he does not know. His account of the Nariskin affair is translated as his narrative, without converting it into independently verified history.

Printedp.309 uses l’objection de quelque miroir. Rendered by means of some mirror in its immediate optical context; French wording retained in the comparison.

The synopsis promises a four-share plow, but the closing body explicitly describes fitting two shares to one plow, followed by unspecified later theoretical improvements. Both readings are preserved.

Strogonof and Strogonoff in this chapter are rendered consistently as Strogonoff. Esvochik is retained from the preceding chapter; drawsky is rendered droshkies. No given names are supplied for unidentified individuals.

Volume II, Chapter X

The old and new roads from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. Russian Tsiganes. The appearance of old Moscow. The people’s summer dress. The devil’s friend. A horse in a balloon. The celebrated conjurer Pinetti. The headless man. Gold pieces in little pies. The king of Prussia and the charlatan. The vanishing aeronauts. A sad end. Purchase of a hotel. Spontaneous combustion of a balloon. A fall into the sea. An aeronautical Robinson. Horn music. A thrashing. Water nymphs. Prostitution housed by priests. Women of pleasure. Swindling in various classes. A masterpiece by Canova. The fine arts in Russia.

[C26-01 | source PDF 323–324]
“A man who has traveled only from Saint Petersburg to Moscow,” one of my friends wrote to me about two years ago, “knows neither the true Russian nor the true Russia. The road from one capital to the other, traveled by all foreigners, may in a sense be regarded as a continuous promenade for the inhabitants of these two cities. This life, this constant traffic, has, if not civilized, at least polished and tamed the muzhiks who inhabit the intervening countryside. Travelers find good stations established by the government, fires, reasonably decent food, and even leather sofas on which to rest and sleep. Regular stagecoach services carry you in three or four days, according to the season, from the square of the Saint Michael Palace to the ramparts of the Kremlin, a journey of no less than seven hundred and eighty versts, or two hundred French leagues. A magnificent highway, begun under Alexander’s reign and continued by his successor, will make this road, when finished, one of the finest in Europe. It is therefore common to hear people who have confined themselves to this journey say that nowhere does one travel as fast as in Russia, instead of simply saying that nowhere does one travel as fast as from Saint Petersburg to Moscow.”

[C26-02 | source PDF 324–324]
God be praised! I wish no ill to a country I found so hospitable and to which I owe a large part of my present comforts. But on reading this description, with my imagination still so steeped in memories of thirty years ago, I fancy myself in the midst of one of those beautiful dreams of the Thousand and One Nights, where the fairies have such powerful wands.

[C26-03 | source PDF 324–324]
Here is the description I myself would have given of the same road:

[C26-04 | source PDF 324–326]
Is your soul firmly pegged into your body? Have you hardened yourself, in the little coucou coaches and other springless carriages around Paris, to endure every jolt that each slightly uneven paving stone gives these antiquated vehicles? Are you the man to count patiently every half-toise between Saint Petersburg and Moscow? Will you find nothing unpleasant in little accidental but frequent sprinklings—for instance, a jet of water suddenly springing up beneath a horse’s feet, like Hippocrene beneath the hoof of Pegasus, and unexpectedly drenching you with muddy water? Will you travel a hundred leagues easily without finding lodging—I will not say comfortable, but a posting house fit for human beings? Then you are tempered and constituted for traveling from Saint Petersburg to Moscow; for your carriage will not make a single movement that is not the result of a shock, to be followed by another, and from shock to shock, endlessly and without respite, from log to log, you will reach your destination. Do you know how this road is paved? Quite simply with trees laid across the road side by side. Now, as the ground is rather marshy and water collects beneath this flooring, which has become springy, one piece of wood or another yields under the horse’s weight and sends up a spray of dirty water that sometimes rises above your quadrupeds’ heads. Such was the old road, the road of my day.

[C26-05 | source PDF 326–327]
Russia did not then possess the preponderance it acquired in Europe through the events of 1815, which came to it because the defeat of the French armies by the elements took place on its territory; because its uncultivated wastes and frozen soil buried the bodies of our soldiers, killed by the murderous severity of its climate. Then, foremost among the enslaved peoples of Europe, it assumed the posture of victory. It marched toward France with its head held high; the peoples along its path rallied to its chariot, and since then it has kept the scepter of Agamemnon entrusted to Alexander. Since then, the affairs of southern lands have fallen under the tribunal of this northern cabinet, and the fate of Cadiz has been decided in Saint Petersburg. Since then, ambassadors, plenipotentiaries, and acknowledged or secret agents have traveled the great roads leading from their capitals to that of the czar. Alexander seems to have felt the propriety of giving Peter I’s city an avenue worthy of the new European metropolis. Besides, he had come to France, whose fine roads had excited the invaders’ admiration, and he wished to make the most traveled road in his empire rival the fine avenues of Paris. But like men who have only luxurious clothes without possessing any real fortune, and who shine only in outward appearance, Russia, endowed with this great road now nearing completion, offers no others throughout its immense extent. Beware of venturing into the interior, where one again finds the old barbarity of manners and almost impassable timber roads. I shall have occasion to return to this subject in more general observations.

[C26-06 | source PDF 327–327]
At the time of my journey we were far from those great disasters, which no one could then foresee. France’s glory was growing, and the future already shone with the splendor of the present. Such vast hopes were conceived at the time when I traveled that long road to Moscow, the end of my journey and of so many illusions!

[C26-07 | source PDF 327–329]
All the memories created around this city by the disasters of the French army did not yet occupy the traveler’s mind. To beguile the boredom of a rather monotonous prospect, he would discover here and there bands of Gypsy women, called Tsiganes in Russia. These nomadic families, numbering fifteen to twenty people, were encountered in the woods during summer. The customs of these tribes have borrowed nothing from the progress of civilization, there or elsewhere. They always live in a state very close to nature, with all the carefree gaiety Béranger gave them in his pretty song of the Gypsies, and in a kind of promiscuous mingling very little in accordance with the laws of morality, but which would be more culpable if they were more imbued with the laws of society. The fathers make a trade of marauding and are mostly horse dealers, always bartering skillfully enough to make a dupe. The girls, who recall the bayadères of India, devote themselves, when pretty, to dancing, cards, and divination; they seem born to tell fortunes. I have sometimes employed them at my ascents, where they brought pleasure and diversion. They adorn themselves with considerable coquetry, love jewels, spangles, and tinsel, drape themselves quite artistically in inexpensive shawls, and dance gracefully to a guitar accompanied by the singing of one of their companions. Skilled at judging at a glance the impression they make, they seek to captivate young noblemen with voluptuous attitudes and even lascivious poses. They are sometimes invited to festivities at country houses, and one young nobleman whom I could name paid with his fortune for a pretty Gypsy woman’s visit and the dominion he let her gain over his heart. Practice enables them to impart to the fleshy part of their legs or arms a kind of vibration, an isolated trembling, rather like the movement a horse makes to rid part of its body of troublesome flies. I have met bands of these Gypsy women in Spain. They seemed to me to have a family resemblance in every country: the same complexion, features, costumes, and habits, and all the same dance—a kind of stamping of the feet, with bodily movements marked by lasciviousness and turns of the arms embellished by their light steps.

[C26-08 | source PDF 329–330]
Meeting these wandering bands is, as I have said, almost the only diversion to be hoped for on either side of the road until Twer, a small town that serves as a halfway point between the two capitals, about a hundred leagues from each. There one found a fairly good inn kept by Italians; for in everything relating to the comforts of life or the ingenious application of the sciences and arts, one could then be sure of finding foreigners at work. For that very reason I more than once had occasion to recall Alexander’s remark on the glacis of the Admiralty.

[C26-09 | source PDF 330–330]
Nor have I retained the memory of any monument worth mentioning along this road; one must reach almost the gates of Moscow to find one. Catherine had the palace of Petrowsky built in the Gothic style a short distance from this capital. It offers a pretty view and agreeably announces the approach to a great city. It was to this palace that Napoleon withdrew when the progress of the fire made him fear for his own safety; from there he watched the winter quarters of four hundred thousand men burn, men for whom the disappearance of so great a city left nothing but deserts of snow.

[C26-10 | source PDF 330–331]
Far from being attractive, the entrance to Moscow from Saint Petersburg is rather calculated to inspire disgust. Dirty streets; wooden houses without order or symmetry; low izbas, some without windows and resembling stables, an appearance given them by wood blackened by the air and soiled by rain; consequently nothing cheerful to the eye: such are the first sight and first impression. As we advanced, we passed through a long suburb of scattered houses, among long plank fences, huts, cottages, and lean-tos; then some dwellings; then farther on, churches, squares, and palaces. At last, when our eye could take in the picture as a whole—the mixture of palaces and cottages, gardens and marshes, the uneven ground, the picturesque buildings, those gilded domes, that confusion of every style of architecture, even the irregularity and crisscrossing in every direction of streets less wide and less long than those of Saint Petersburg—all this panorama presented Moscow in a form more curious, more Asiatic, more foreign, and consequently far newer to the traveler than even the city of Peter I.

[C26-11 | source PDF 331–332]
For the rest, the same silence, the same order, and the same policing are observed in both cities, where one also notices the same bustle. The variety of foreign costumes strikes the visitor’s attention more in Moscow than in Saint Petersburg. One meets a multitude of unlike faces there: so many specimens of the numerous and diverse peoples composing the Russian Empire. Large gatherings therefore often present the observer with Tartar, Chinese, Samoyed, Ostiak, Barate, Kalmyk, Kamchadal, Bashkir, Causaque, and many other faces. An assembly of representatives from the various provinces of the Russian Empire would look rather like a Parisian costume ball. Do so many heterogeneous elements await from time a bond that will cement their union by making their customs uniform, or the seeds of dissolution born of differences in climate, origin, and needs, to be developed in the future by the enlightenment of civilization!

[C26-12 | source PDF 332–333]
As for the Russians, the upper classes everywhere dress in the French fashion and long ago laid aside their national costume. I have already described what the common people wear in winter: as we know, it is a rough sheepskin, often very dirty. In summer a man wears simple linen drawers with a blouse or shirt. This garment, either one as he chooses, is not tucked into his trousers but held outside them by a belt. I recall in this connection a nobleman who, reproaching his son for some improper remarks about the French, said to him, “You are very fortunate that they taught you to put your shirt inside your breeches.”

[C26-13 | source PDF 333–333]
On my arrival I put up at Moscow’s most renowned inn, the Hôtel de Paris. There I met again a Frenchman, M. Désirabode, whom I had already known in Saint Petersburg and who later persuaded me to buy the very hotel in which we were staying. I was in a sense driven to it by the need to obtain premises that no one elsewhere would let me have. Who would believe it? Superstition was then so great that people believed I had regular dealings with the devil, and everyone feared profaning his house by admitting one of Lucifer’s familiars! The noblemen first sent their servants, their slaves, to the phantasmagoria to see whether they would return alive; they came themselves only after reassuring themselves and risking their muzhiks.

[C26-14 | source PDF 333–334]
These superstitious fears seemed all the more inexplicable to me because M. Garnerin had just left Moscow when I arrived. Though very ignorant of physics, he had at least been able to learn the most ordinary arrangements of phantasmagoria, which were no longer a secret. This was not enough to make it a means of attracting the public, but it was at least enough to try to harm me and neutralize my success in advance. Readers will remember that if M. Garnerin had caused me no damage in Saint Petersburg, it was because he had been unable to; he had spared no effort. In Moscow he hit upon advertising “phantasmagoria for laughs.” After producing its effects rather crudely, he took those present behind the curtain and explained the methods in detail. Notices in the newspapers even announced that he would take the apparatus to the houses of anyone who requested it. Try as he might, he did not succeed in discrediting me. But how did his demonstrations fail to cure the Muscovites of their fear? Could my name, Robert, have recalled to them ideas of a pact with the infernal band?

[C26-15 | source PDF 334–335]
Long before my arrival, I had been warned that the ill will M. Garnerin had shown me in Saint Petersburg was still more active in Moscow. A certain Pinetti, the most celebrated and skillful of conjurers, was there at the same time and had informed me of his maneuvers. “M. Garnerin,” he wrote, “intended to make copies of your collection; but he is neither a physicist nor a chemist, still less a mechanic, and his only talent is filling balloons by sheer practice; he has not succeeded. The whole city speaks ill of him because he was Robespierre’s companion, and for that reason no one receives him in society. This obliges him to associate only with the small number of Frenchmen in Moscow. I myself have lost all the confidence I had in him since he published an account of his journey here, a work full of lies and boastful tales. The said book speaks very ill of you, etc.” I have quoted these last lines only to show the state of opinion in Moscow concerning the French Revolution, for I do not presume to distribute political blame or praise to anyone. As for M. Garnerin’s real merit, on which I shall have occasion to express a conscientious opinion, it will soon be seen that M. Pinetti was hardly a competent judge.

[C26-16 | source PDF 335–336]
I must insert here a few rather curious details about this Pinetti, whom I have just mentioned. This person called himself the Chevalier Pinetti de Merci. A few months after my arrival in Saint Petersburg I received a letter from him, although I did not know him, proposing a partnership from which, he said, he had the highest hopes. I thanked him, and it was in his reply that he gave me the details about M. Garnerin just quoted. In that reply he returned to his first proposal: “In case you have not brought your balloon to Russia,” he told me, “I have mine with all the necessary preparations; we can come to an arrangement about it. I assure you that the proposal I already submitted to you, to send up a small living horse, will be a new and very curious spectacle. I guarantee, and take responsibility for this condition, that the balloon will remain in the air for half an hour by means of a mechanism of my invention; then the horse will open the valve and descend quite peacefully. If you intend to come to Moscow with your collection, you will do very well. For my part, I give you my word to speak in your favor to all the nobility and inhabitants of Moscow, etc.”

[C26-17 | source PDF 336–337]
It will doubtless seem rather singular to see a man of M. Pinetti’s profession promise his patronage with the nobility. Yet if one recalls what I have said of the welcome given in Russia to anyone who came to teach Russian society to amuse itself and pass the time, one will soon see that such patronage could have its value. This will be clearer still when one knows Pinetti’s unshakable confidence in himself and what he dared to do. As for science, he lacked its first elements, and his attempts at ballooning may amuse my readers for a moment.

[C26-18 | source PDF 337–338]
Pinetti had traveled widely and long enjoyed a European reputation; he had done everything to win it. Never, I believe, did anyone carry the art of charlatanism further. On arriving in a city where he intended to give performances, he took care to prepare his public before appearing before it, through exploits that, repeated by word of mouth, left the whole population expectant. When I arrived in Petersburg, people related utterly incredible examples of his mystification and sleight of hand. One day he enters a barber’s shop to be shaved, settles into a chair, has the towel put beneath his chin, and throws back his face, ready for the soapy hand. The barber leaves him in this professional posture to fetch hot water from another little room. Already the soap is lathering properly in Figaro’s bowl; he approaches almost without looking and, guided by habit, applies the pasty liquid to his customer’s chin. Oh, wonder! He finds feet, arms, hands, a body in a frock coat—and no head. No head, good heavens! What is this? Terror-stricken, he opens the door and runs away. But Pinetti rushes to the window and calls him back. He had drawn his head into his frock coat so skillfully, covering it with his handkerchief and leaving the collar projecting, that the tonsorial artist’s surprise and fright were perfectly natural. The next day the man did not fail to tell the whole neighborhood that the day before he had shaved someone who could take off his head and put it back at will.

[C26-19 | source PDF 338–339]
In the Summer Garden Pinetti meets a young Russian selling little cakes. He calls him over, buys a cake, bites into it, and complains of feeling something hard. The young man watches him: he opens the cake before him, and inside is a gold ducat. The conjurer puts the handsome coin in his pocket, buys a second cake and then a third, and finds another coin in each. He wants to buy the rest of the cakes. Strollers have gathered around the seller, and they all want to buy some too. It seems a good bargain: a ducat for a kopeck! Twelve francs for a sou! The young man, on the contrary, refuses to sell any more. He hurries away to open his remaining cakes, but there are no more gold coins! Good flaky pastry, which he would have found very appetizing a moment earlier, is all his little cakes contain, and it no longer pleases him. He still has two intact: he rejoins Pinetti and offers them to him. Pinetti takes them, pays for them, opens them, and shows in each the coins the little vendor failed to find in the two dozen he spoiled. The poor boy bites his fingers in vexation and stares at Pinetti in bewilderment. The story spreads and is told in social circles and gatherings. Soon the man’s name supplies the key to the riddle, and Pinetti is eagerly sought after everywhere.

[C26-20 | source PDF 339–340]
When Pinetti appeared onstage, he knew how to draw the nobility around his table by letting them guess little things, making them accomplices in his charlatanism. Amid this entourage he appeared in costumes embroidered all over with gold, changing them three or four times in an evening. He boldly offered to speak every language and knew none tolerably well, not even his own; but his effrontery knew no bounds. He did not hesitate to adorn himself with a multitude of foreign decorations and display an impudent luxury at his creditors’ expense. When I went to Berlin, the city still remembered seeing this quack ride through the streets covered in embroidery and the insignia of every order, in a coach drawn by four white horses. Several times the guards turned out under arms and presented them as he passed, for he was taken for some great prince, and the drums beat a salute. One day the king of Prussia was traveling in his modest two-horse carriage behind the supposed prince. He witnessed the soldiers’ mistake, inquired who was receiving such honors, and gave the Chevalier Jean Pinetti de Merci only twenty-four hours to leave his dominions.

[C26-21 | source PDF 341–343]
The fortune Pinetti quickly made in Russia proves how truly it was an El Dorado at that time. He would certainly have died very rich had he confined himself to his cup-and-ball tricks and the art of sleight of hand, which he possessed to such a rare degree. Unfortunately, he meddled in ascents: hence his discredit and the loss of all he had amassed. Another Italian, named Petchi, was in Moscow at the same time, an artist with real talent for sculpture who kept a waxwork exhibition. The two joined forces and conceived a rather bizarre plan. They announced an ascent and had a vast amphitheater built, at an estimated cost of no less than twenty-five thousand francs. The balloon, inflated with atmospheric air, was brought into the middle of this enclosure. For several weeks they hoisted it with a pulley a hundred times a day at the spectators’ pleasure, without even suspecting that so fragile a globe required great care and was worn out by constantly rising and falling. Preparations for inflation began, and the supposed aeronaut’s complete ignorance became manifest. Our chevalier asked himself how many barrels were needed for a balloon intended to lift two people. “Five barrels per person,” he said to himself, “that will do; but since they are small, I shall use six. Let it be twelve barrels and fourteen bottles of English acid.” It was all instinct and guesswork, based on what he thought he had observed, without any further calculation of the proportions of weight and capacity. Thus he was taking for two what scarcely sufficed for one. But the most amusing part of the operation was his method of introducing gas into the balloon. He had doubtless heard the geometrical axiom repeated that a straight line is the shortest way from one point to another, and saw no reason to make the gas take so many detours. The twelve pipes, bent half a foot above each barrel, therefore discharged hydrogen into the balloon without passing it through any cooling device. The interior of the pneumatic apparatus was no better arranged: the water and acid, whose quantities had not been calculated at all, fought so unequal a battle that matter from the barrels entered the balloon’s neck along with the gas. One pipe that escaped this accident suffered another kind: the heat became so great that its solder was beginning to melt when it was cooled with ice. Twenty people worked to moderate the temperature in all the pipes and succeeded only with great effort.

[C26-22 | source PDF 343–343]
Surely this was enough misadventure to make them give up inflation altogether. All hope of success was abandoned, and nothing remained but to persuade the public, flocking in from every side, to leave the scene.

[C26-23 | source PDF 343–344]
This ridiculous attempt perhaps offers an example of the greatest clumsiness ever to preside over such an operation. Yet I have not said everything that was to make this ascent bizarre. If I may believe otherwise well-informed people, the Chevalier Pinetti had no intention of venturing into the open air his embroidered clothes, his plumed hat, his ribbons, and least of all his own person. A few days before the ascent, his wife, composing the wording of the poster, asked whether it should announce that he would go up in person. “Go ahead with the poster,” he replied. “It is all the same.” “But have you really decided?” she answered. “Will you go up?” “You will see,” he said, turning pale. “I want to make a head like mine and one like my companion’s, dressed exactly like us. We shall arrange everything so that the public sees the gondola only when it has risen a little. Then the public will marvel and shout, ‘Long live Pinetti! Long live a great physicist!’” His intention, his French-born servant told me—and it is from him that I have these details—was to have his partner Petchi make wax images of them both and place them skillfully in the basket, while they themselves disappeared underneath by a route prepared beforehand. This would have carried mystification of the public further than anyone had ever imagined. Such a facetious idea was worthy of a conjurer who had nothing left to attempt in his profession but to make himself disappear.

[C26-24 | source PDF 344–344]
The failure of this experiment brought imprisonment to one partner, ruin to the other, and a quarrel between them both: a lawsuit followed. Pinetti maintained that the balloon made by Petchi was bad. “Am I a tailor?” he would say. Petchi, on the contrary, reproached Pinetti for the poor quality of his gas. “Poor!” Pinetti retorted. “Monsieur Petchi cannot say that in good faith; he knows very well how much virtue my gas has.”

[C26-25 | source PDF 344–345]
Indeed, M. Petchi had been in a position to appreciate all the virtue of Pinetti’s gas. Before they became partners, Pinetti had wished to give him a sample of his knowledge and invited him to witness the inflation of a small balloon. Judging prudence necessary with this reckless physicist, Petchi refused to enter the shed containing the apparatus and stood in the doorway. “I want you,” Pinetti told him, “to judge with your own eyes that my gas is genuine inflammable gas.” He immediately brought a lighted candle near the current of air. One can imagine the speed of the blaze: the barrel burst into a thousand pieces, and splinters struck him and the bystanders; the balloon was reduced to ashes, and several spectators had their clothes burned in various places. Assuredly it was inflammable gas, gas endowed with virtue.

[C26-26 | source PDF 345–346]
From that event onward, fortune deserted Pinetti. The riches his incomparable charlatanism had brought him melted away in the pans of the scales held by Themis. The lawsuit was long, and his coffers emptied; he lost confidence in himself and assurance in his delivery. He ceased to speak in that lofty tone and with the accents of a man who doubts nothing, which overawe the ignorant crowd. After he was dismissed from the proceedings, following many tribulations, he went to die overwhelmed by poverty and debt at Bartitchoff in Volhinie. The receipts from his ill-fated experiment had amounted, it was said, to the enormous sum of twenty thousand rubles, or sixty thousand francs—an astonishing example of what charlatanism and audacity can achieve.

[C26-27 | source PDF 346–346]
Pinetti had married a young Russian woman, the daughter of a carriage maker; he had two children by her. He was scarcely fifty when he died. Some time after his death I was passing through Bialistock; his widow came to find me and show me his collection of scientific apparatus, hoping to sell it to me, but I found very few interesting objects. I confined myself to buying a diamond medallion and a ridiculously large ring, which he had received from Alexander’s munificence. It will be hard to believe that Pinetti had the audacity to ask the emperor to stand godfather to one of his children. What will seem still more incredible is that the emperor consented, either because he was deceived about the conjurer’s imaginary merit or because he believed he could not violate a principle of his religion which, I think, forbids anyone, without distinction of rank, to refuse on such an occasion.

[C26-28 | source PDF 346–347]
Had I had only the memories of Pinetti’s ascents before me, my task would have been all too easy; but Garnerin, endowed with a boldness I have never denied him, had been there and succeeded. Before announcing an aerial voyage, therefore, I thought I should devote several months to scientific demonstrations. After searching a long time for premises suitable for my exhibitions, I found myself obliged to accept a room in the very inn where I was staying; but they wanted to make me responsible if a fire broke out. I feared that malice might take advantage of this clause, and thought it better to buy the entire house. It belonged to Prince Sibirsky, whose gambling losses had considerably disordered his affairs; he sold it to me for sixty thousand rubles, then worth a hundred and eighty thousand francs. I had owned it only a short time when a large and magnificent brick theater opposite my house fell prey to the flames, through an accident whose nature was never quite established. It was thought that ill will might have played a part, and that the desire to deprive the Russian nobility of a meeting place which drew them away from certain establishments then privileged to gather them was not unconnected with this disaster. My hotel’s roof was made of sheet iron; it soon became almost red-hot, and had the firefighters not drenched it several times, my house would certainly have burned down.

[C26-29 | source PDF 348–348]
My scientific and phantasmagorical demonstrations in this hotel met with all the success predicted for me, and all I could desire. They made me known throughout the city and favorably disposed the public toward the ascent I announced in the first days of spring. By May 1, 1806, I had already constructed a new balloon for this experiment. It was twenty feet in diameter, perfectly spherical, and weighed about fifteen pounds, increasing to forty after its two coats of varnish. It may be taken as a fairly general rule that the weight of the varnish more than doubles that of the envelope.

[C26-30 | source PDF 348–349]
One particular circumstance accompanied the construction of this balloon: the danger that it would ignite spontaneously. An hour after varnishing it, I left the place where I was working to dine. Great was my surprise on returning to be assailed by a strong smell of turpentine, whose penetrating fumes attacked the eyes and even prevented anyone from approaching the balloon. Such was the fermentation of the coating I had applied that the heat drove a thermometer inserted into the envelope up to seventy-two degrees; it was impossible to keep one’s hand inside. To save it from imminent combustion, we had to hurry to move it into a spacious room and inflate it with atmospheric air, the only way to prevent the accident. This danger shows the importance of not leaving a freshly varnished balloon folded up. When the folds are gathered together, the fermentation is readily explained by the absence of contact with atmospheric air. The same cause makes hay piled in a barn before being spread out and dried catch fire so often. Moreover, the fermentation occurs only when varnish is applied directly to the silk; if it has already received other coats and only a fresh coat is being added, there is less danger of an accident.

[C26-31 | source PDF 349–350]
An enormous crowd gathered at the site of my ascent. Following another aeronaut so closely, I would not have believed that such keen interest could be shown. At seven fifty-five, I took off with my pupil from the garden of the Aulic Councilor and Chevalier Zoubof, known as Niscouchny. A violent storm had only just subsided. The balloon rose rapidly to a certain height, and I tried a maneuver which interested the spectators. I had taken care to fill the balloon only three-quarters full; several ropes attached to its equator and running down to the basket enabled me to draw any part I chose completely inward, presenting a convex instead of a concave surface to the wind and thus offering it greater resistance. This made the balloon turn as I wished, now to the left, now to the right. It is doubtless easy to understand that a perfectly spherical balloon rises quietly without turning. If, on the contrary, it is even slightly misshapen, the wind catches the least projection and, pressing more on that part than on the others, gives the balloon a kind of spiral direction: it rises, so to speak, like a corkscrew.

[C26-32 | source PDF 350–351]
We rose very high, and at our greatest elevation encountered currents so violent that we had very serious reason to fear our fragile apparatus would break apart. After these alarming jolts, it became the plaything, as it were, of a rapid whirlwind or a kind of aerial waterspout. This rotation increased gradually, then diminished in the same way. I attributed these effects to the displacement of air into the void formed when clouds dissolved into the rain and hail that had so closely preceded our ascent. We also felt an extreme cold that froze our ink, an effect evidently produced by the same cause. We had already seen the sun set before our departure. Raised above the terrestrial horizon, which so long deceived mankind about the disappearance of that heavenly body and led people to believe, at the close of each day, that its rays were extinguished in the waves, we saw it still radiant for us, extinguished for the country we had just left, and already bringing dawn to other climes. We landed safely in the middle of a plain at Nicolana-Percwerke.

[C26-33 | source PDF 351–352]
Only six weeks later, I followed this experiment with a fresh trial of my double parachute, for which I had constructed the balloon just described. It succeeded like the earlier ones. I had every reason to congratulate myself on the pleasure this descent gave the nobility of Moscow, judging by the crowds of carriages around the Croutizky barracks where I had established myself; inside, I must confess, there were few people. M. Zoubof’s garden, the scene of my first ascent, stands some distance from Moscow on a height planted with gardens interspersed with houses; it was therefore necessary to enter the enclosure to see the balloon rise. The Croutizky monastery, then a police barracks, on the contrary, stood on a plain, allowing people in their carriages to look over the walls and see without opening their purses—as though people in certain circumstances of wealth should not have a noble scruple about accepting from chance a benefit purchased by an artist’s labor; as though a rich man’s sense of honor should not be compromised by amusing himself at someone else’s expense.

[C26-34 | source PDF 352–353]
Justice was done, I repeat, to the beauty of the experiment; and when fortunate opportunities are not otherwise lacking at other times, that recognition is always a consolation. I have found that it awakens jealousy everywhere, and that a foreigner’s successes never fail to stimulate national pride. We have seen how the Viennese tried to set up M. Mayer as my rival. A Russian named Cachinsky likewise appeared in Moscow and played, in a most bizarre fashion, the part of an aeronautical Robinson Crusoe. He had announced the launch of a hot-air balloon. Whether from distrust of himself or suspicion of his fellow citizens, he established himself alone on a small platform in the middle of a large pond in M. Demidoff’s garden in the German Slabode. The hot-air balloon never managed to rise, and burned for a long time on the ground to the sound of hissing. The public, confined to the shore somewhat like Louis XIV on the riverbank, sent jeers at him from every side and took revenge by shouting, since they could do no more. Cachinsky, meanwhile, at peace within his watery enclosure, calmly watched his vessel burn and waited for night to free him from his besiegers, quite certain they would not try to cross his ramparts. A year later the same Cachinsky repeated both the experiment and the failure, although he had made a taffeta balloon instead of a hot-air balloon.

[C26-35 | source PDF 353–355]
For my ascents I had used a kind of music entirely unknown in France, but familiar to anyone who has visited Russia’s two great cities: horn music. There are as many musicians as there are notes in the music. One, for example, blows only C, his neighbor D, a third E, and so on to the end of the diatonic scale. The succession of notes and the precision of execution are admirable; heard from a distance, the resulting harmony has something enchanting and indefinable about it. I owed the addition of this attraction to my experiment to the kindness of Prince Schérémétof, who obligingly lent me his band. Such ensembles are clearly very rare and can belong only to very wealthy households. Who in France could feed a man merely to attach him to a single note, for example, and make him perform the function of one hole in a flute? They say only Russians can execute this harmony: I readily believe it. One must own a slave to condemn him to blow a G-sharp or an A-flat all his life. But in Russia obedience knows no limits, and the Saint-Simonians would not prosper there. There is no aptitude other than what the lord assigns each individual: one shall be a barber, another a painter, another a musician, because such is his pleasure, because he needs a barber, a painter, a musician, and for no other reason. If the first has a clumsy hand, the second is shortsighted, and the third has no ear for music, a progressive education in strokes of the whip puts everything right and serves intellectual emancipation, as we have said in France for some years. Hunting-horn music does have one drawback: it may be incomplete at the moment one wishes to enjoy it. Any number of causes can put some notes out of order in this keyboard of men: now F will be ill, now B will have been whipped, and the whole scale suffers.

[C26-36 | source PDF 355–356]
When I speak of whipping, it is because I know from the experience of one of my servants, named Timaphé, how punishments were administered by masters even in the city. It should be borne in mind that the great majority of the inhabitants of a Russian city are serfs, even the richest merchants, unless they have bought their freedom with gold. All the income of Russian lords derives from the value of their peasants or slaves. Each pays his lord a levy called the abrok, according to his earnings. First he comes to tell his lord that he has found such-and-such a position, and on that basis the master fixes the levy; the greediest, or those who burden themselves with gambling debts, are sometimes too demanding. One day Timaphé asked my permission to go out and take his abrok to his mistress. The next day I noticed that his eyes were still red and asked why. “My mistress,” he told me, his heart full, “did not think my abrok sufficient, and had me whipped!” It seems they had taken the poor fellow down to the stable and stripped off his clothes to beat him with leather straps. The pitiless mistress, unwilling to trust the zeal of her slaves, had come down herself, spectacles on her nose, to make sure the marks were deep enough. Timaphé had nothing at all to say in praise of this old lady.

[C26-37 | source PDF 356–357]
This servant sometimes astonished me with certain superstitious fears, which he shared with all his compatriots. Thus I could have tried everything in vain to persuade him to fetch water from the river in the evening: his reason was fear of being drawn to the bottom by some naiad or water nymph. Does it not sound like a Greek speaking, with the smiling imagination of his religion and his beautiful sky? It is hard not to believe that these remnants of fable came to them through Greeks who had wandered abroad since their country’s enslavement, much as the Jews have since their dispersion. Be that as it may, one feels a certain surprise on hearing the names of the graceful creations of Hellenic mythology in the mouth of a muzhik. The blessing of the waters and other beliefs about rivers and streams might, however, mean that the idea of superior beings inhabiting them belongs to the country itself.

[C26-38 | source PDF 357–358]
If the natural effect of superstition is to nourish the people’s veneration for priests, we must admit that it scarcely produces this result among the inhabitants of Moscow. It is also true that the clergy’s lives there are by no means exemplary and, far from commanding respect, justify the contempt with which their immorality is affronted. How often, from my house near the Marshals’ Bridge, did I send my précatchik to pick up these drunken churchmen and pull them out of the mud, where they presented the disgusting spectacle afforded elsewhere only by the rabble! The scandal of their conduct and the vice of their ignorance do not end there. Among their privileges is the exemption of their churches, houses, and everything attached to them from police supervision: the police must stop at their threshold. How do they use this prerogative? By sheltering prostitutes—the dregs of society there more than elsewhere—and allowing them to establish their homes in the places under their protection. Is this not an impudent outrage against morality and religious belief? Such conduct sufficiently explains the apparent anomaly between the superstitious ideas of a people who would pass no cross, image, or church without a profusion of signs of the cross, and who are perhaps the most faithful of all peoples in observing Lent, and the disdain that same people profess for the ministers of their religion. The curious significance they attach to meeting a clerical robe clearly attests their antipathy: they believe that encountering one on the road in the morning foretells some disastrous accident during the day.

[C26-39 | source PDF 358–360]
One cannot form an idea of the women engaged in prostitution in Petersburg and Moscow from those who, as darkness approaches, range through most of the streets of Paris, particularly those displaying on certain boulevards a luxury once far more dazzling beneath the galleries of the Palais-Royal. Thus, when the Allies invaded our capital, the Russians could not recover from their delight at finding everything capable of satisfying human sensuality assembled in a single bazaar. I saw them go into raptures over this permanent seraglio, of which their own country had given them no conception. In elegance, beauty, and richness of dress, they found there what they might have dreamed of in the Grand Seigneur’s harem, and recklessly swallowed up their pay and borrowed money. In Russia, prostitutes do not go out into the streets: they are confined to a single quarter, as those of Paris formerly were in the Lombards quarter. No other families inhabit this retreat of prostitution, frequented only by soldiers and foreigners. The people are neither sufficiently corrupted by civilization nor sufficiently rich to seek this kind of pleasure at the cost of financial sacrifices. A man values a kopeck more than a Parisian workman values a napoleon; his money is certainly hard-earned. One might almost say that, if he steals, it is less to acquire than to economize and spend as little as possible of his wages. That is why he pilfers everything he can lay hands on. In Moscow, my dwornich had no scruple about stealing from my coach house all the brass edging the panels of my carriage. A nursemaid married to a soldier stole several pairs of stockings from Madame Robertson, who warned the servant’s husband, explaining the severe punishment to which his wife exposed herself if any future incident obliged her to inform the police. The soldier, as tall as one of Frederick’s grenadiers, soon decided on a correction and administered it on the spot before several people. His sense of justice prevailing over his instinct for modesty, he briskly seized his wife, bent her over his thigh, and, after placing her in a certain position as though she were a very little girl, administered with his powerful hand a most conscientious punishment. “There was a worthy husband,” said the onlookers.

[C26-40 | source PDF 360–361]
Pilfering is no less common among the merchants. You examine and choose a particular cloth, for example; if you turn your attention away for a moment, or they manage to draw it to some other object, you may be certain that the cloth you have just paid for is exchanged for another of inferior quality. My scientific demonstrations often obliged me to buy a whole poud—about forty pounds—of wax candles. Who would believe it? For a year I did not know that I was being cheated of at least five pounds of goods each time. Yet I watched the weighing with my own eyes and put the weights on the scales myself, sometimes in one pan, sometimes in the other. The merchant very skillfully hooked a five-pound weight beneath the basket containing the candles and cheated me with impunity at the very moment when I was keeping my eyes widest open.

[C26-41 | source PDF 361–363]
But the reproach of greed and rapacity should not be confined to these latter classes; I shall have to extend this observation later. In general, I did not find among the lords a liberality proportionate to that of the sovereign. Surrounded by so many people who possess nothing, they imagine that the little they give must seem a great deal, and always misjudge the value of men and things, unless those men and things are muzhiks. Prince Yousoupof, still living and one of Moscow’s wealthiest landowners, furnished me with an example. I owned a magnificent tam-tam, an instrument he coveted. Several times he proposed to buy it, but never offered more than a third of what I had paid the Duc de Chaulnes for it. He doubtless thought, very reasonably, that with this third he could make a muzhik’s fortune—and I was no lord. His desire that I should give his sons some notions of physics in conversation, and his pleasure in discussing with me the phenomena I demonstrated, had opened this prince’s house to me; I used to dine there fairly regularly every fortnight. Prince Yousoupof had traveled widely. After roaming Europe, he had come to spend a wholly philosophical and Epicurean old age in his beautiful Moscow palace. Everything that had gratified his tastes on his travels was assembled there, from the most skillful French cook to the most flighty nymph of the theatrical wings. A swarm of young and pretty Russian girls whom he had taught to dance and act could, when required, perform the most agreeable ballets of our grand Opéra. Works of art shone in this palace, but were badly arranged and found very few people to appreciate them. Crossing a large, smoke-filled hall, I noticed in its center a marble group of the most graceful lightness. I approached: it was Cupid stealing a kiss from Psyche as she slept. Never had marble assumed more supple, voluptuous, or airy forms. Before me stood one of Canova’s chief masterpieces!

[C26-42 | source PDF 363–364]
This beautiful composition in the middle of a deserted, almost abandoned hall seems to me to convey an idea of the fate of so many beautiful works of art in Russia. Unless one has lived for a long time in that empire’s two capitals, as I have, one cannot imagine the incalculable riches they contain. These cities yield only to Paris and London in the number or value of their statues, antiquities, libraries, manuscripts, medals, picture galleries, precious stones, and everything that counts in the realm of science and art. But where are the men sufficiently educated, with tastes sufficiently cultivated, to feel their merit and bring it to light? These are, so to speak, instruments they do not know how to use. The lords possess them to display them, from pure ostentation, rather than to enjoy them. Catherine II gave the impulse to this desire to contest with foreign collections the possession of their priceless treasures. This empress wanted her empire to shine with every glory: she monopolized everything in Europe, even great men, whom she made her correspondents and tributaries, and whom she would gladly have naturalized as Russians. These examples impressed the nobility, a body in which the sovereign’s deeds and actions are always aped, to be aped in turn by the lower classes. The nobility began ruining itself to please the sovereign, buying works of art on every side, which seem to have been thrown there for storage, as in a vast warehouse.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-six-tailpiece.png]
Original landscape tailpiece at the close of Volume II, Chapter X.

Editorial record

The opening quotation is a letter dated only relatively, about two years earlier; no correspondent or calendar date supplied. Its 780 versts/two hundred French leagues are preserved without recalculation.

The claims about Russian roads and the 1815 political settlement are Robertson’s retrospective assertions. His narrative distinguishes the earlier journey from later events.

Bohémiennes rendered Gypsy women and Tsiganes retained as the second historical designation. The author’s ethnic, sexual and moral stereotypes remain in the translated narrative without endorsement.

The source forms barates and causaques are conservatively rendered Barate and Causaque, rather than silently replacing them with an assumed modern ethnic identity. Other historical ethnonyms are translated in recognizable English forms.

The page following printed 321 is misnumbered 222 in the original (PDF 334); it is logically 322. Text joins continuously from Fort to ignorant; no missing page inferred.

Pinetti’s attack on Garnerin, including the Robespierre allegation, is preserved as an attributed letter, not adopted as a verified fact. The horse opening the balloon valve is preserved as Pinetti’s proposal.

The rhetorical Robert/devil question is retained; no identification of a literary or musical source is inserted into the text.

Pinetti’s quoted mixed French/Italian dialogue and caricatured accent are translated completely into English. The French comparison preserves the mixed-language wording. Virtou is rendered virtue, preserving the repeated joke about the explosive gas.

The waxwork-substitution plan is explicitly attributed to Pinetti’s French-born servant. Allegations and technical failures remain the narrator’s account, not independent verification.

Mis hors de cour is rendered dismissed from the proceedings, not expelled from the royal court. The Académie’s 1740 definition describes dismissal of one or both parties because there is no ground to plead; the text does not establish the merits of the judgment. Lexical reference: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A 3 C 2098

The date May 1, 1806, twenty-foot diameter, fifteen-pound envelope and forty-pound varnished weight are printed readings. The seventy-two-degree varnish temperature has no specified scale. The author’s explanation of fermentation and spontaneous combustion is historical, not modern technical guidance.

Printed p.338 says convex instead of concave, although the immediately described pulling-in maneuver suggests the reverse. The source wording is retained. The explanation of high-altitude currents, cooling and frozen ink is also the author’s theory.

Niscouchny, Nicolana-Percwerke, Croutizky and German Slabode retain the source’s geographical forms. Robinson aéronaute alludes to Robinson Crusoe’s isolation and is translated aeronautical Robinson Crusoe. The comparison with Louis XIV on the riverbank is retained without an unverified specific identification.

French solfège syllables ut, ré, mi, sol dièse, la bémol, fa and si are rendered C, D, E, G-sharp, A-flat, F and B. The single-note horn orchestra and the rhetoric of progressive education and emancipation are preserved, including the author’s satire of coercion.

Abrok, précatchik and dwornich retain the source spellings; context identifies a levy and household servants. Marshals’ Bridge translates the printed pont des Maréchaux without substituting a modern place identification. Historical generalizations about Russians, clergy and prostitutes remain the narrator’s claims.

The account of a soldier punishing his adult wife retains the narrator’s wording and the onlookers’ approving remark as historical testimony, not editorial endorsement. Poud, kopeck, napoleon and historical pounds are retained rather than converted.

The source identifies the sculpture as Cupid kissing a sleeping Psyche and as a work by Canova. That description is preserved without asserting a modern object identification. The tam-tam is the gong previously acquired from the Duc de Chaulnes.

The original synopsis promises a fall into the sea; the complete surviving chapter body instead describes a safe landing on a plain and a subsequent double-parachute trial. No sea-fall account is silently supplied.

Volume II, Chapter XI

Departure for Sweden. The Jesuits of Polosk. Men turned into little actors. A Jesuit dancing on a steeple. A maritime Eden. The appearance of Stockholm. Gustavus Adolphus. Count de Fersen. A gentleman in costume. A beautiful panorama. A plan for suicide from a balloon. Charles V at the Pantheon. Cracked brains. Gustavus III. Gustavus Vasa’s house. The mines of Falhun. Stockholm’s islands and rocks. Inland roads. Arrival in Copenhagen.

[C27-01 | source PDF 365–365]
One of those misfortunes against which all grief is powerless and all consolation useless made me leave Moscow hurriedly toward the end of spring. I had just lost a little daughter whom I loved to the point of adoration, and needed distraction from a piercing thought which the places where her mother and I had so often lavished our caresses upon her constantly brought back to my mind. My grief even gained such a hold on me that my physician began to fear seriously for my health. He imperiously prescribed a change of scene and forced me to set out without delay. I left with my assistant, M. Michaud, for Stockholm.

[C27-02 | source PDF 365–366]
We crossed Russia rapidly, traveling north and roughly following the course of the Düna, though not as far as its mouth in the Baltic; all this country was then flooded. We compared this neglect of the land, which a government’s skill and foresight did nothing to protect against the invading waters, with the immense works of the Dutch in their continual struggle and victory over the ocean. But the master’s eye, so active from Petersburg to Moscow, cannot watch over every part of so vast an empire. It concentrates on a few places intended to deceive foreigners about the true state of civilization under this colossal government. How many years must still pass before the land, crowned with a population proportionate to its extent and fertility, yields mankind all the productive riches it could supply—before agriculture comes to ask them of it! Meanwhile, nothing is arranged to make the flooded ground healthy, or to drain and render passable those vast forests from which, after a thousand detours, my carriage could escape only by increasing the number of horses.

[C27-03 | source PDF 366–368]
We followed the banks of the Düna as far as Polosk. I stopped a whole day in this town to visit in detail the establishment the Jesuits founded there at the time of their expulsion from France. Its buildings are substantial and have the usual appearance of a monastery; but around the grand staircase are emblems of the sciences cultivated there. Most of the objects used in teaching them have been painted on the walls. Nearly all belong to optics or descriptive geometry: here is the image of an electrical machine, elsewhere an air pump, and many other paintings of this kind. The reverend Father who directed the establishment received us very affably and guided us through several large rooms, all filled with instruments for teaching physical science. Father Kircher, a celebrated member of this society, established a similar museum in Rome; that learned Jesuit published a Latin description with illustrations in a folio volume, now rare, containing very curious information about various optical inventions. In these rooms I thought I recognized the Abbé Nollet’s entire collection. But how greatly all these objects have improved in sixty years! Today theory differs no less than practice from what was known and done in the time of Louis XV.

[C27-04 | source PDF 368–368]
They hesitated to admit me to the phantasmagoria room; but I soon showed them that here I was in my own empire, and the wand of ghosts was my scepter. My questions soon embarrassed their pride even more than their reserve. They understood that they possessed only some of the fantascopic illusions, and expressed great regret that the magnifying lenses whose use I explained could not be made in Russia. They did not understand me when I spoke of galvanism. Nevertheless, they asked for much information about modern discoveries and scientific progress in the city of enlightenment, as they called our Paris. I soon realized that they were more eager for phenomena than for theory, and taught them several very curious experiments, which they considered, they told me, a most flattering reward for their kind reception.

[C27-05 | source PDF 368–370]
Having noticed several concave mirrors, I showed them pleasant ways of using them, including this one: “You will doubtless find it amusing,” I told them, “to enjoy, all at once, the sight of a pantomime performed by little actors. The chief concern is to place the spectators properly. The method I shall describe could pass for a new phantasmagorical procedure. As in the experiments of that art, two rooms must first be arranged. The first, A, containing the actors, measures about twenty-one feet; the other, for the spectators, should be larger. In the partition separating the rooms, make a square opening twenty inches across. The little theater B stands in front of this opening; it is eighteen inches deep and three feet nine inches high, so that the eyes of seated spectators graze its floor. Beside it is a small concave mirror d, with a focal length of ten inches and approximately the same diameter. It receives the image of the objects in A and inverts them at a. Mirror c, seventeen inches in diameter with a nineteen-inch focal length, receives this inverted image and reflects it into the middle of the little theater, whose rear opening is eight inches high and six wide. The center of mirror c stands four feet two inches high. Behind the mirror, a frame covered in black cloth must conceal the space where the actors perform; they can move forward or backward by seven feet. The actors performing their mime in A must be brightly illuminated by twelve lamps with an air current. It would be preferable, my reverend Fathers, to light them with hydrogen gas; you could do so if you were still in Paris”—the reverend Fathers listening to me all gave a stifled sigh—“but in Russia no one has any idea what gas lighting can be: let us content ourselves with lamps. They hang from the screens DD, which should be about four and a half feet apart. The little theater B should be moderately lit by eight small wax candles placed between the wings, but in such a way that they do not illuminate the mirrors.[C27-N1]

[C27-06 | source PDF 370–371]
“With everything arranged in this way,” I added, “thirty-four people can enjoy the illusion. They must be placed in the other room so that their eyes do not pass beyond the diverging lines ff and gg, forming an angle of seventeen degrees. Six feet from the theater, place two people in the first row, two in the second, three in the third, three in the fourth, four in the fifth, and so on. The number of spectators could even be doubled by making a second opening in the partition and placing another little theater there, as the following figure shows.”

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-seven-figure1.png]
Original figure 1. Concave mirrors and two miniature theaters, with spectator positions.

[C27-07 | source PDF 371–372]
While giving these details to the reverend Fathers, I had drawn before them the figure reproduced here for the reader, which left not the slightest obscurity in my demonstrations.

[C27-08 | source PDF 372–372]
The director was very eager for us to perform this experiment immediately. But since I could not remain in the house long enough, I asked his permission to try one still newer and, above all, more amusing. In my first volume[C27-N2] I promised to acquaint my readers with it, and I take this opportunity to fulfill that promise. I insisted that they should ask nothing about what the experiment was meant to produce, but wait for the result. I sent M. Michaud to our hotel to fetch a few things I needed; the rest I found in the establishment.

[C27-09 | source PDF 372–373]
For my purpose I chose a perfectly situated room opposite the establishment’s steeple. I had noticed a priest standing on a terrace at the end of the building onto which the window opened. To this window I fitted a box[C27-N3] two and a half feet long and one foot high and wide. At the end of this box I placed an oblong mirror, from whose lower portion I had removed the tin backing, and inclined it twenty-five degrees by means of an endless cord.

[C27-10 | source PDF 373–374]
I then asked the Father director to put his eye to a small tube a few inches long, arranged for the purpose. Scarcely had the reverend Father looked than he began to laugh, then to laugh louder, then to roar with laughter, even to tears, and hold his sides. Everyone hurried to put an eye to the instrument; everyone withdrew in convulsive laughter. The whole community came, and the whole community was seized with the same inextinguishable laughter; I myself laughed, if possible, louder than all of them. What one saw through this marvelous instrument was one of the gravest Fathers in the house dancing, capering, gesticulating, and balancing splendidly on the steeple’s weather vane. Imagine his great three-cornered hat, his wide sleeves, his long black robe, all perched so high, and our priest seemingly about to break his neck and tumble down at any moment! No, I shall never see anything as comical as a Jesuit Father dancing on the point of a weather vane. I thus left the monastery in high spirits, and we parted cheerfully, very pleased with one another. M. Michaud had shared our fit of laughter and had almost completely forgotten his taper.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-seven-figure2.png]
Original figure 2. A reflected actor appears on a distant steeple.

[C27-11 | source PDF 374–375]
This illusion is certainly one of the most entertaining and surprising, though also one of the simplest, in catoptrics. As with a stroke of a wand, you place any individual on the needle of a steeple or the point of some other building: you could give people a hundred guesses at how he can remain suspended in the air! Through the unbacked part the spectator sees the steeple, while the inclined mirror brings the actor’s image onto it. The steeple must be at some distance; the image of the person to be shown must stand out against the sky, with no houses, trees, or other solid bodies behind it. As for the figure’s gesticulations, one can readily understand that moving the mirror might contribute to them; but it is better to arrange matters with the person appearing in this charming illusion. The engraving on page 362 shows its arrangement.[C27-N4]

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-seven-figure3.png]
Original figure 3. The single-concave-mirror experiment described in the author’s note.

[C27-12 | source PDF 376–377]
As the good Fathers were in high spirits, I ventured to joke a little about certain aspects of their method of instruction. They defended these with fairly good reasons, and I almost let myself be persuaded that some children’s unruliness could scarcely be restrained by simple reasoning. “Be assured,” they told me, “that we study each child’s inclinations and the means of correcting them more carefully than you seem to believe. For example, we have had occasion to obtain good effects even from phantasmagoria. A boy of fifteen was the son of a widow who loved him tenderly and who, discovering in him with despair tendencies she had done everything to prevent, begged us to make him the object of our special attention. We tried many means of rescuing him from dissipation and some more serious vices; all were useless. This youth had preserved a reverent memory of his father and, despite his frivolity, never spoke of him without emotion. We did not hesitate to deceive his imagination for a time in order to prevent his heart from hardening. After repeatedly reproaching him for disturbing his father’s departed spirit, we predicted that, unless he put an end to his mother’s sorrows, he would one day see his father appear in a shroud, sadness stamped upon his face. Indeed, one of our Fathers summoned him one evening and led him, without warning, into a dimly lit room hung in black. Taking advantage of the disturbance caused in the child’s mind by the room’s gloomy character, he ordered him to kneel and almost immediately announced that his father was about to rise from the earth, led by the specter of Death. Curiosity, no less strong than astonishment, at first prevented the youth from turning his eyes away; but scarcely had he seen the prediction fulfilled than he covered his face with his hand, and at that very instant his face was bathed in tears. Brief though it was, this vision made an impression on him which has never since been erased, though time may have weakened it. It has given us mastery over his inclinations, and certainly this youth will owe both his happiness and his virtue to us.”

[C27-13 | source PDF 377–378]
Despite the success of this hazardous experiment, on which I congratulated the good Fathers, I do not myself think it would be very prudent to repeat it, except perhaps in some desperate case; for then one resorts to the physicians’ maxim that a doubtful remedy is preferable to a certain evil. I also thought I should reproduce a small drawing of this experiment which they themselves had kept.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-seven-phantasmagoria.png]
Original plate facing source page 366. A phantasmagorical apparition used by the Jesuits. Original Roman-numeral band retained.

[C27-14 | source PDF 378–378]
We continued our exhausting journey, traveling day and night, and at last reached Riga, where we embarked for Sweden.

[C27-15 | source PDF 378–381]
The ship that took us aboard carried a cargo of grain. Since she drew fourteen feet of water, we were obliged, after four days of waiting and uncertainty, to lighten her load, and then sailed with all canvas spread. It is hard to convey the beauty of such a voyage, particularly as one approaches the Swedish coast. We entered a delightful archipelago. It was as though the Baltic had suddenly traced a thousand winding routes through green countryside at the height of its luxuriant growth, dividing it into a multitude of islands adorned with trees, foliage, meadows, and varied fields. Sometimes the channel is so narrow that the ship seems about to brush these enchanting gardens and carry them away in her wake. The whole lively archipelago seems mobile and afloat as the ship makes rapid knots, and the traveler wonders why all this fairyland flees him so swiftly. Some islands even offer a picturesque contrast to the rest: bald and bare of vegetation, like human heads from which the razor has stripped the last useless remnants of hair, they raise their smooth rocky summits above the water in the form of great rounded mounds. The Greeks would have asked what sea monsters had suddenly been struck motionless, and their fertile genius would have imagined some metamorphosis for these rocks. Several of these hillocks are topped with small forts or lookout posts, used, I was told, to close the passage by means of great chains stretched from one to another. It would be imprudent to navigate this maritime Eden at night. We therefore spent two or three nights there; then one day, at four in the morning, we were almost stupefied to glimpse an entire city, well built and very picturesque. Its effect on us was like that of a magnificent château upon a walker who had hitherto been buried in the paths of a great park and did not expect a building to appear at the end of an avenue.

[C27-16 | source PDF 382–384]
Once ashore in Stockholm, and after waking from a first sleep to which I had surrendered with delight, I was astonished at how little activity the city showed. I had formed a different idea of Sweden’s capital. It seemed small and thinly populated, for its inhabitants appeared few, at least in the streets: no carriages, no bustle, none of the noise and industrial ferment that accompany a great concentration of human beings. The harbor alone offered variety and some appearance of commercial life. I therefore placed Stockholm among our third-rank provincial towns and, frankly, after a stay of about five weeks, carried that impression away with me. My surprise was considerable when, very recently needing to know its population exactly, I found it stated at eighty thousand souls. In all honesty, it must have concealed half of them in my time. I shall nevertheless make a few observations on the subject. First, a number of years have passed since my journey. At that time there were so few troops that I could not obtain a few soldiers for my ascent. Sweden had also long suffered the disasters of war and was continuing to exhaust its men and money. Moreover, the king did not live in the capital and stayed in Sweden only intermittently. The reigning sovereign was that Gustavus Adolphus, that adventurous prince who first wished to be a second volume of Charles XII; then, stripped of his royal title, called himself successively Count of Gotorpp and Duke of Holstein; then, unable to become a Moravian brother, passed from pilgrim of Jerusalem and Black Brother to colonel without a regiment under the name Gustafson; finally requested citizenship in Basel and, after obtaining it, went to live in Frankfurt. This king, like his predecessor, could never stay in one place: he was not in Sweden during my stay in Stockholm. Much of the nobility had abandoned the capital through discontent with political changes, just as we have seen the French nobility leave Paris after the July Revolution and retire to the provinces. King Bernadotte, on the contrary, has not left Stockholm since his accession; everyone knows what an increase in wealth, industry, and consequently population is brought to a city by the permanent residence of a sovereign’s court. Fifteen years of complete peace and industrial impetus throughout Europe must, moreover, necessarily have greatly increased the population of every country in this part of the world.

[C27-17 | source PDF 384–384]
The impression Stockholm made upon me as to its importance may be measured by my conviction that I could not recover the expenses of my long journey there. Happily I was mistaken, though not enough to persuade me that I had been so very far from the truth, even if all the inhabitants seemed to have gathered to enjoy a spectacle their city had never witnessed. Count de Fersen, grand marshal of the court—the same man who showed such concern in France for the family of Louis XVI and took so many steps to serve them in their misfortunes—encouraged me with his special patronage. The fatal end of this noble Swede still seems incredible to me, so surrounded with homage did I see him in Stockholm, in a position that commanded general respect. In 1810, the people, suspecting him of having contributed by poison to the death of the crown prince Frederick Augustembourg, whom Bernadotte succeeded, stoned him at the prince’s own funeral procession.

[C27-18 | source PDF 384–386]
M. d’Edelcrantz, a member of the Academy, and Professor Schwarts also became my patrons. The experiment took place on Sunday, September 7, 1806, in the public garden. Just as I was about to enter my basket, the arrival was announced of a gentleman in attendance upon His Royal Highness the Duke of Sudermania. In a letter full of obliging expressions, His Royal Highness had conveyed his regret at being unable to attend my ascent, his poor health preventing him from leaving his pretty palace of Rosemberg. At least he sent his gentleman, M. Bergmstrahle, to deliver a present he was pleased to offer me. I relate this little circumstance because of the effect this gentleman’s costume had upon me. He was dressed exactly like the Spaniards in our plays: white silk stockings, satin breeches with puffs and large blue and yellow bows, a small cloak over his shoulder, and a feathered cap on his head—the very Lindor of the Opéra-Comique. He discharged His Highness’s commission nobly. I received him with sincere gratitude and as much gravity as I could manage, but followed him with my eyes down the garden path until he got back into his carriage. I believe, though perhaps I am mistaken, that the spectators initially thought this personage was going to take his place in the basket.

[C27-19 | source PDF 386–387]
I was not, however, deprived of the presence of the other members of the royal family then in Stockholm. The Grand Duchess of Sudermania accepted my invitation and appeared amid a large part of the nobility. A numerous public awaited the balloon’s departure with keen curiosity. The acid I had been obliged to obtain locally was much inferior to English acid, for it contained nitric acid and released a very heavy nitrous gas; it delayed my ascent by an hour. I left Hummel-Garden at seven in the evening. At a moderate elevation I took in the entire picture of a city unlike any other in Europe. All the islands I have described; palaces and houses interspersed with waters rolling around bare rocks; an archipelago almost within a city whose existence it would never lead one to suspect; lakes and cottages, fir woods, wild scenery and cultivated fields; towers, churches, and treetops; the roar of the river in narrow places where it seems to struggle to break a passage, and its peaceful flow where it can spread into a still sheet of water—all this offered the most romantic and admirable view imaginable. The weight of the mixed gas filling my balloon allowed me to rise only thirteen hundred feet, keeping this beautiful panorama always before me as I drifted slowly toward the sea. If I prolonged my voyage, my only prospect for landing lay in the Baltic or the forests. I thought I would satisfy the spectators by offering their curiosity, sooner, the spectacle opposite to the one they had just applauded, letting them witness the descent after showing them the ascent. I touched down at the edge of the royal park. As I had foreseen, the public came running in crowds, applauded, and carried me, still seated in my balloon, into the middle of the city.

[C27-20 | source PDF 387–389]
Very fortunately, I had brought from Moscow only a small balloon nineteen feet in diameter, consequently incapable of carrying two people. Had I possessed a larger one that day, my career of balloon voyages would in all probability have ended at Stockholm. Several days before the experiment, and at the very moment of ascent, a young merchant of the city urged me most insistently to grant him a place in my basket. Absolute impossibility alone prevented me from obliging him. His persistence had nevertheless surprised me. Early the morning after the ascent, I saw him enter my lodgings. “You could have done me a great service yesterday,” he told me. “You did not, and you would doubtless have been still less inclined to do so had you known the reason for my request.” The young man then frankly confessed that his intention had been to throw himself down, making himself immortal while freeing himself from a painful existence. This confession sent a sudden shudder through me. “But sir,” I said, “that is as though you had sworn my death as well as your own.” He had not calculated that result, although it was easy to foresee. Plainly, the balloon, relieved of at least a hundred and fifty pounds, would have risen so quickly that I should not have had time to release the gas fast enough to prevent the effects of its expansion. Besides, caught unawares by the jolt, I might have followed this madman very closely and descended, contrary to my habit, without my balloon. I insisted on knowing the cause of his desperate resolution. He confessed it only in part, but afterward I learned the whole story. In love with a young and charming Swedish girl, he had managed to have himself appointed her guardian. He placed her in a boarding school, where he visited her frequently, and eventually established himself so thoroughly in that innocent heart that her affection could refuse none of his wishes—all the less because he asked everything in the name of a marriage whose promise he repeated daily. Repentance came for the trusting girl, together with shame. She informed him of her condition; but her seducer’s ardor had cooled, and his visits grew rare. At last she wrote that she expected him without fail on a certain day at a certain hour. He missed the appointment. The poor girl had made up her mind: she threw herself into the sea, from which she was recovered dead. The affair caused a stir in Stockholm. All the women declared themselves against the selfish lover; people pointed him out in the streets. His conscience pursued him too, and it was to escape remorse and general condemnation that he had determined on this perilous leap.

[C27-21 | source PDF 389–390]
The strangeness of this plan recalled to me an incident that occurred in Rome two centuries ago. Emperor Charles V, leaning against the balustrade of the Pantheon’s dome, was looking down. Raising his eyes as though to question those of his companions, he noticed a very extraordinary movement by a Swedish nobleman attached to his person. He concealed his reaction and prudently waited until they had descended before asking the cause of the movement that had caught his attention. “At that moment,” the Swede replied, “I felt the strongest temptation to embrace Your Majesty and throw myself with you from the dome, to make myself immortal.” Charles V warmly thanked him for believing that his death could lead to immortality, and soon removed him from his court. I should have done as Charles V did, and resented the Swedish nobleman’s compatriot for wanting to treat me like an emperor of Germany.

[C27-22 | source PDF 390–391]
These singular incidents, and many others one might collect, would confirm the observation that a number of Swedes have received a hammer blow to the forehead and are fit to wear the little pointed cap with bells. One often sees it in everyday dealings with them: rarely are they the same from one day to the next. Today they overwhelm you with affectionate demonstrations; tomorrow they neglect to greet you and seem not to know you. Extravagant ideas are familiar to them: Charles XII and Gustavus IV could hardly have been born among another people.

[C27-23 | source PDF 391–392]
The opera house had been placed at my disposal for inflating my balloon. It rested on the very spot where Gustavus III had been killed by a pistol shot fired by Anckestroëm during a ball—the same place still shown to foreigners today. Personal vengeance alone had not guided the murderer, for he declared that he had previously sworn Gustavus’s death at the foot of the scaffold of Colonel Hœtsko, condemned for political offenses. It is well known that Gustavus III spent his whole life struggling against Swedish liberty and the constitution, winning, losing, and regaining despotic power. This struggle has one curious feature: resistance to the encroachments of power always came from the nobility, while the other three estates—clergy, burghers, and peasants—yielded much more readily to repeated attempts at absolute sovereignty. What proves how shortsightedly the people judge, and how they love change of any kind, is that Gustavus III is thought in Sweden to have wished to increase the people’s liberty: “That is why the nobles had him assassinated,” the theater’s doorkeeper told me. I must not omit another characteristic detail: the soldier stationed at the theater door would run up to beg alms whenever he saw me.

[C27-24 | source PDF 392–394]
While M. Michaud attended to packing our belongings, I planned to visit the house where another Gustavus had hidden, hoping to restore Swedish independence. There I should be close to the celebrated Fahlun mines, and could use that proximity to acquaint myself with copper mining, of which the coal mines of my homeland can give no idea. I set out with a guide, and we entered Dalecarlia. After passing through Guna and Tagnef, we reached a place called Ornoes, where the house of Sweden’s liberator is preserved. Its construction is rather peculiar: as in old houses, the staircase is outside. I have visited the rooms of several great men, including Voltaire and Rousseau; the effect one feels there comes entirely from the profound impression their memory, brought to life in the places they themselves inhabited, makes upon the soul and imagination. But Gustavus Vasa’s room strikes one through material objects, through peculiar figures, costumes, and attitudes. This nearly square room is on the second floor above ground level. On either side of the door are the two faithful “gray” Dalecarlians, Gustavus’s companions, still dressed in white woolen cloth, armed from head to foot, and wearing pointed sugarloaf hats such as were worn in 1520. The third hero of fidelity, the devoted servant who never left Gustavus, likewise stands at the foot of the bed. Finally, a fourth figure absorbs all attention as soon as one turns to him: Gustavus himself, placed in a corner, holding the baton of command in his right hand, his left resting on a Bible. On the same table as the Bible were the great king’s gloves and helmet. Maps cover the walls, which also bear rather poor portraits of the kings and queens of Sweden since his reign. The very few visitors are even shown the more-than-private place from which he escaped before bringing about the gathering at Mora. When I went to that latter place, remarkable for the charm and beauty of its lake, I asked to see the stone from which Gustavus addressed the Dalecarlians before going to drive the Danes out of Stockholm. They did not fail to remind me of a curious coincidence: Gustavus III had encouraged his troops on the same spot—only a few years had passed since that later event—to march against Stockholm, where the constitutional party had taken up arms in its defense.

[C27-25 | source PDF 394–395]
The kind of innocence there undoubtedly is in preserving Gustavus Vasa’s room as I have just described it, rather like a small waxwork gallery, is perfectly in harmony with the still crude roughness of Dalecarlian manners. In antiquity this country might have passed for both Vulcan’s warehouse and workshop, or even, if necessary, for that of Amphion, who seems to have been the first known mason and who raised walls by charming labor with songs, as most of our Limousin workmen still do in Paris. Dalecarlia seems formed entirely of stones and metals: everywhere are mines of porphyry, silver, and copper, but above all copper. The country naturally abounds in smiths, men of toil and fatigue, little suited to the refined civilization of cities and still exercising the privilege of shaking hands with princes and kings when they meet them. The Dalecarlians have also preserved a great love of liberty: they do not understand the idea of despotism and see in their king a leader rather than a master. How could it be otherwise, when among this people Gustavus Vasa’s memory is as present and widespread as Napoleon’s can be in our countryside; when all classes speak of him as if the event had happened yesterday, as if each had personally shared his perilous labors? I said that the two Dalecarlians in Gustavus’s room were gray: the whole population is divided into gray and black Dalecarlians, dressed only in these two colors, probably according to whether or not they work in the mines. Both groups are remarkable, moreover, for their cleanliness.

[C27-26 | source PDF 395–396]
No one needed to tell me that I was approaching Fahlun. I recognized it from afar, as I would have recognized the island of Lemnos, by the number of lighted furnaces that made the town seem entirely ablaze. Already, half a league away, an unbearable sulfurous smell assailed the nose. This sulfurous atmosphere tormented me night and day and made me frankly regret having undertaken the journey. No fumes are more contrary to my constitution or less breathable for me. Let anyone who finds the smell of a match disagreeable shut himself for forty-eight hours in a room where several packets are continually burned, and he will have some idea of my situation. I spent the night in the only inn in this little town of smiths, with its five or six thousand inhabitants and its church notable for a copper roof. Very few foreigners are seen there; certainly I shall not encourage them—let them first consult their physician.

[C27-27 | source PDF 396–398]
About five hundred toises from the town lies the famous Kopparberg mine. The wildness of the place, the disorder of the ground, the interlacing stones, and a kind of jumble of great rocks all present the image or traces of a convulsion of nature. Nothing could be more terrifying, or more horribly picturesque, than the gulf crowning the entrance to Kopparberg’s iron mine. How can one describe its exterior? How different its entrance is from the regular shafts of the mines of Liège and Kraków, where a simple, symmetrical, vertical opening leads into the earth! But here, who has raised these enormous masses of rock all around, jutting one above another and presenting a vast excavation whose points seem to interrupt it in order to cover new caverns in their flanks? Like bent giants, these rocks extend the vault of their immense backs. To reach the furthest projecting peak, one crosses a light wooden bridge that seems suspended in the air. You are then at the crater’s edge; you put on a miner’s costume and are embarked in a square box, suspended over an abyss. If the rope broke…! But it does not break; at least, no example of such an accident is cited. Since vitriolic acid attacks hemp and even iron, the rope is made of leather and replaced every ten months.

[C27-28 | source PDF 398–398]
How could man have dug to such depths merely to discover that mineral riches existed far beneath these mountains of stone? It seems that, to teach him, the earth must have torn open its own breast, swallowed living men into its entrails, and then returned them to the light with the secret of their discoveries. Vast collapses have indeed occurred more than once in this mine; that of 1789, which lasted two days, is particularly cited.

[C27-29 | source PDF 398–399]
Torches must replace daylight inside the Fahlun mines; only by their light can one see the many galleries at different depths. These galleries are named from various circumstances, like ships in a harbor: their direction toward a cardinal point, a new reign, some accidental resemblance in the blocks, or an event that occurred there serves to christen them. Thus there are the Fleet, Gustavus, Brother, Sophia-Albertina, North, Mars, Charles-Frederick, Pole Star, and Cavalier galleries, among others. Among them is a place called the Council Chamber, where, I was told, the mine’s shareholders assemble. It contains tables and a chandelier. The king stopped here on September 2, 1788; he even wrote his name on a piece of pyrite taken from the mine. They took great care to frame it and put it under glass, for the art of flattering sovereigns is no less familiar in the depths of the earth than in our brilliant mints, as is the art of making such souvenirs attractive to foreigners.

[C27-30 | source PDF 399–400]
The workmen cut and detach the ore in fragments. Almost universally they use gunpowder, which sometimes produces very powerful explosions. I did not linger to watch them work: the smell of sulfur was suffocating me. As quickly as possible I climbed a gentle slope formed into steps, so easy that horses go up and down it almost to the bottom of the mine. The total depth is, I believe, about six hundred toises, perhaps more. At the bottom of this staircase only a few toises remain to be descended, for which an iron ladder is used. I could doubtless have obtained more precise details, but was extremely impatient to hasten my return. I compared this foul air with the pure air of the upper regions, so beneficial to my chest, which I had long been accustomed to breathe. I would rather repeat my sixty ascents than repeat this descent into Avernus.

[C27-31 | source PDF 400–400]
I came out through the great opening, an immense aperture forty toises high, two hundred long, and a hundred and twenty wide. I forgot to say that the mine’s underground workings are divided into several districts and twelve hundred shares. I was assured that the workmen earned no more than five or six rixdales a month, that is, twenty-five to thirty francs.

[C27-32 | source PDF 400–401]
The ore’s first roasting, once it is brought outside, takes place in the open air in stone furnaces of a hundred to a hundred and fifty tonneaux. The ore is piled in a more or less lofty pyramid on two layers of wood, which are set alight; it is left to burn in this way for fifteen or twenty days. The same ore is then subjected, with great precautions, to a stronger fire inside buildings, and afterward passes to the smelters. The effect of roasting seems to be to drive off the sulfur and calcine the iron.

[C27-33 | source PDF 401–401]
I was urged to visit an immense vitriol factory at Fahlun or nearby as well; but Fahlun was not what I loved about Sweden. I dreamed of other rocks: those of Stockholm’s islands, and I hastened back to the capital.

[C27-34 | source PDF 401–402]
Before leaving Stockholm, I took a boat excursion to those enchanted islands that had seemed so delightful on my arrival. On one of the rocky mounds I have described, I found a fisherman sheltered in a wretched hut, spending a good part of the year there at the foot of a rock several hundred toises high. I amused myself by asking various questions, among them whether he knew if these rocks had always stood so high above the waves. He replied that his father remembered a time when most had their summits only level with the water and the others were much lower. This assertion, together with a thousand other proofs, demonstrates that sea level continually shifts, and that the mass of water presses against one side of the globe, invading it daily while abandoning the other. My travels have furnished some observations on this subject, which will find their place at the appropriate point.

[C27-35 | source PDF 402–403]
I was eager to leave, to complete by way of Copenhagen the rapid tour I had planned for distraction, and to rejoin my family in Moscow. This consideration determined me not to expose myself to the uncertainties of a sea voyage, but to make for Denmark by the land route. The manner of traveling in this country deserves description. A traveler generally buys a small, open, one-horse carriage. He sits in his little cart, puts his belongings beneath his feet, takes the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, and sets out alone with the animal he drives, going as far as they please along the road. One travels on the rock itself, for almost the whole of Sweden seems embedded in it. The roads are consequently the finest and smoothest in Europe, often without ruts, since the light traveling carriages cannot bite into such hard ground and are not numerous enough to wear it away by friction. It is useful to note that travelers take care to provide themselves with a cloak, a garment generally worn by the Swedes. M. Michaud and I therefore set out, each in his little carriage, driving our own vehicles, since in this way one is one’s own guide. We traveled day and night, in sunshine and beneath the stars, sleeping without anxiety and leaving the reins loose on our horses’ necks. I feared no prank from mine; but the sight of clear water tempted him and, driven by thirst, he left the road for a little lake. Very fortunately, he tipped me out before reaching it; otherwise the most beautiful water in the world would have become for me the dark waters of death.

[C27-36 | source PDF 403–404]
One cannot imagine the peace, tranquility, and repose of the soul and all the bodily faculties experienced on such a journey. The silence, the quiet and varied face of nature, and its profound calm fill one with rapture. Stagecoaches are unknown on these roads; commercial transport never disturbs you, and one of our great carriers’ wagons would throw all the good people of this country into ecstasies. The reason for this absence of commercial life is readily understood: the roads do not connect populous cities, and the sea is the great highway to the capital, the only one used by commerce and foreigners. The prospect to right and left is often smiling and always rural: lakes, woods, varied contours of ground, but no mountains and none of those aristocratic residences that would intrusively recall, amid gentle reveries, the luxury, torments, and demands of city life. On the roofs of village dwellings we looked with surprise at enormous storks’ nests, to which the inhabitants delight in offering hospitality. These birds are regarded, in a sense, as the guardian spirits of the cottages, for people refrain from harming them. As for superstition, the only difference between Russian and Swedish peasants is the difference between crows and storks.

[C27-37 | source PDF 404–405]
Inns are found only in towns, at fairly long intervals; but along the road one encounters rustic posting houses where horses are changed, and where one must often wait while someone fetches from the meadow the fortunate quadruped allowed all the freedom of country life. Their masters’ manners are, it is true, very simple. A charming scene, if my pen could supply sufficiently delicate shades to depict it, would make my readers smile. One day I entered a small, low, isolated house. The door stood open; I crossed two rooms and entered a third. In this last room a young woman of perhaps nineteen, with a peaceful brow and a white and rosy complexion, whom I would choose to personify health, was busy spinning. It was hot; a short-sleeved chemise hung open to her waist, concealing none of a perfectly formed bust. She spoke to me without moving and without seeming at all surprised by my presence. If there was embarrassment on either side, it was mine: she was too innocent to blush or take alarm. Truly, this superiority humbled me. I stammered a single question and went out.

[C27-38 | source PDF 405–406]
Magnificent weather hastened our journey. We arrived safe and sound at Helsingborg, sold our little carriages there, and a boat carried us to Copenhagen in very little time. Sun, dust, and eight days without a change of linen had left us far from presentable; our disordered hair added to our picturesque appearance. We scarcely thought of it, however, and presented ourselves at the Hôtel-Royal. But Messrs. Smetzer and Rausc, the hotel’s proprietors, looked us over twice and at first seemed very doubtful whether to accommodate us. We owed that favor to our being French. After resting and attending to our appearance, we soon reappeared looking like respectable people and were accepted as such by our hosts.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-seven-vasa-house.png]
Gustavus Vasa’s house. Original caption: Maison de Gustave Wasa.

Original notes

[C27-N1 | source PDF 370–370]
The larger mirror a is, the more perfect this illusion will be, and the less oblique the mirrors will be.

[C27-N2 | source PDF 372–372]
Page 351.

[C27-N3 | source PDF 372–372]
Or a tube.

[C27-N4 | source PDF 375–375]
A, the box; B, the steeple; D, the actor on the terrace or a balcony; E, the mirror, moved by the crank and endless cord passing over the two pulleys; F, the small tube through which the experiment is viewed.

The combinations of optics offer an inexhaustible field to the curious and learned. For such a person I describe here an experiment in which a single concave mirror inverts the same objects twice. It appears in figure 3. B is the same little theater, placed with its opening a eight feet from window A. Concave mirror c is about three feet from a, or twice its focal length. Opening a must be reduced to five inches high and three-quarters of an inch wide, in the shape of a window. The little theater should represent an apartment. The plane mirror d is placed beneath opening a; it forms an angle of sixty-eight degrees with the table. An object at A, passing through opening a, is projected by the concave mirror onto mirror d, which returns it to the concave mirror; but at the same time it also reflects the concave mirror. Thus a second concave mirror seems to be at c, returning to c the objects it has received from it and producing the same illusion as the little theater described above, page 359.

Editorial record

The first miniature-theater diagram is original figure 1. Historical feet and inches, focal lengths,34 spectators and 17 degree field are retained. The first room’s 21 feet is not assigned a specific dimension in the French. The original note says mirror a, although a marks an image in the body explanation; this source inconsistency is preserved.

The cross-reference to Volume I page 351 is retained; it points to the promised optical illusion in ChapterXIII. The figure 2 legend calls the viewing tube F, whereas the original engraving appears to label it C. Diagram letters are preserved rather than redrawn.

The entire small-type note on printed 363, including the further experiment and figure 3, is retained. The repeated c labels and exceptionally narrow three-quarter-inch opening are printed readings. No optical redesign has been substituted.

The narrative says Michaud almost forgot his taper but does not explain its role in this account. The sentence is retained without supplying an explanation.

The printed sentence about the widow and her son has a misplaced grammatical subject. English makes the widow the person requesting special attention, as the surrounding pronouns and narrative establish; the comparison retains the original syntax.

The inserted phantasmagoria plate atPDF 379 and blank verso 380 interrupt printed 366–367, whose text joins continuously. Neither is counted as a missing printed page. The original plate bears a curved band with Roman-numeral markings; this is retained in the image, not expanded into an invented motto. The only running locator is T.II p.366 (Volume II, page 366).

Gustavus Adolphus in the Stockholm account is the same monarch called Gustavus IV later in the chapter. The text’s Gotorpp spelling, political chronology, fifteen years of peace and population estimate remain historical source readings; no modern history is silently substituted.

The source calls the deceased crown prince Frédéric Augustembourg and describes Fersen’s death as stoning. Both are retained as the author’s account. The ascent date Sunday, September 7,1806, thirteen-hundred-foot height and nineteen-foot balloon diameter were checked in the images.

The unnamed merchant’s confession and the story of his ward are narrated as Robertson’s account. The source supplies no exact age for the ward. Its sexual coercion, suicide, remorse and public-condemnation narrative is preserved without embellishment. The later CharlesV anecdote and generalizations about Swedes are likewise the narrator’s claims.

The account of GustavusIII’s death, Anckestroëm and Hœtsko retains the source’s spellings and historical assertions. The traveler’s time of visit is distinguished from retrospective comments about later events.

Ornoes, Guna and Tagnef preserve the source geographical forms. Gustave Wasa is rendered Gustavus Vasa; Fahlun follows the body spelling, while the synopsis’s Falhun is preserved there. The more-than-private escape place retains the source’s euphemism.

The source first describes copper mining but then calls Kopparberg an iron mine. This inconsistency is retained. Its 1789 collapse date,1788 royal visit, estimated six-hundred-toise depth and 40/200/120-toise opening measurements are printed readings, not independently verified measurements.

Tonneaux is retained as the historical furnace-capacity unit; no metric-ton conversion is inferred. Rixdale wages and the author’s franc equivalence are preserved. Grillage means ore roasting, rather than grilling or a grate.

The claim that sea level shifts from one side of the globe to the other is Robertson’s historical theory. The fisherman’s story and several-hundred-toise rock height are retained as reported, not substituted with a modern explanation.

The phrase l’onde noire is rendered the dark waters of death, preserving its literary contrast with clear water. The nineteen-year-old spinner’s scene retains the original matter-of-fact description and the narrator’s embarrassment.

The original caption Maison de Gustave Wasa is translated Gustavus Vasa’s house. All 40 numbered text pages 353–392, the inserted plate and its blank verso were inspected consecutively.

Volume II, Chapter XII

Activity in Copenhagen and its harbor. The character of German cities. Grand Marshal de Hauch. Kierstrup’s failure. A warm welcome. Danish honesty. Ascent between two seas. An anecdote about King Christian’s supposed madness. Terror in the night. The parachute as relics. A monstrous personage. Duginine’s prediction. A dangerous prank by some sailors.

[C28-01 | source PDF 407–408]
The sight of Copenhagen affected me quite differently from that of Stockholm. One had almost discouraged me; the other, on the contrary, revived me at the first glance. Copenhagen is indeed a city where people live and move, where commerce displays its active system of circulation. One senses within its boundaries a hundred thousand inhabitants turning the element around them to the advantage of their industry, their comfort, and their wealth. One is not surprised that this city can fit out nearly three hundred and fifty ships a year on its own account, and that more than six thousand enter its harbor. But during my stay, a spectacle still more imposing than this daily bustle in the harbor and roadstead irresistibly held my gaze: this was before the treacherous English attack. Nothing could be more majestic than the gathering of that magnificent fleet, that fine line of warships which seemed to rest there in complete security from the exhaustion of hurricanes and the turmoil of battles! They had only a few fathoms to sail to reach the warehouses, each containing a ship’s complete rigging. We French were then at the height of our military glory, and it was difficult to have a thought that did not reflect it in some way. How often, thinking of Napoleon’s triumphs on land and the unfortunate battle of Trafalgar, did I long to see my country possess those ships! I shall say more, without even fearing the accusation of foreseeing events after they have happened: I asked myself why Napoleon did not come to request the cooperation of that fleet. I distrusted our enemies; I feared the English. Shortly after my departure, events proved that I had not misjudged their good faith.

[C28-02 | source PDF 408–409]
In appearance, moreover, Copenhagen resembles a German city, where cleanliness is more conspicuous than splendor, and the inhabitants’ liveliness stops short of exuberance. The Danes are very gentle in manners and character; they are honest and hospitable. Houses built of brick or wood abound in Copenhagen, but they are carefully maintained. I found the city somewhat like Hamburg.

[C28-03 | source PDF 409–409]
My first steps, after the customary visits to the ambassadors of France and Russia, took me to the grand marshal, M. de Hauch, who received me with perfect kindness. He expressed his delight at seeing an experiment performed in Copenhagen that was all the more likely to excite his countrymen’s curiosity because it was unknown to them; he himself pursued physics with considerable success. M. de Hauch had compiled a dictionary of that science in Danish. Such powerful patronage soon secured all the necessary permissions, even the one I had scarcely dared hope for: to make my ascent in the exercise courtyard at Rosemborg.

[C28-04 | source PDF 409–411]
At Copenhagen, however, as in most of the cities through which I had already passed, I found memories of some unfortunate or clumsy attempt at ballooning. Thus, two years before my arrival, in October 1804, a certain Kierstrup had tried to ascend in a hot-air balloon. He had made it from very heavy canvas, thickened still further with a heavy coat of red oil paint, and fitted it with an iron gallery. All this weighed so much that the fire lost its power and the straw blazed to no purpose. The machine would not expand; two men stationed at the tops of two masts waited four hours for the signal to cut the ropes. A moment when the balloon seemed to show some willingness was seized upon: the ropes were cut, the half-filled machine rose a few toises and fell on the public, producing the confusion one may imagine. The crown prince and his daughter, among the spectators best placed to miss none of the evening’s pleasures, narrowly escaped being victims of the fall: the house very nearly came down on their heads. A preliminary trial had nevertheless taken place in the prince’s presence. True, the balloon had not departed, but at least it had been inflated; that was enough to satisfy him before the performance. Kierstrup’s machine was sold to pay the debts, and soon all the wagons in the city were covered with the remains of the unfortunate balloon. The people could not see these scraps, for which they had paid all too dearly, pass without a few sighs. But one consolation remained, with which they were finally content: revenge on Kierstrup through a rather peculiar anagram of his name, composed of a French feminine adjective and a German noun. Despite this double origin, the expression could not decently be uttered in any language on earth, except perhaps among the Romans, who had a god of that name.

[C28-05 | source PDF 411–411]
If the public’s spontaneous kindness and encouragement impose a duty to succeed, nowhere could failure have grieved me more than at Copenhagen. Everyone was so eager to show interest in us, express the wish to see us succeed, and seal all these assurances with numerous subscriptions. The king and the diplomatic corps had immediately placed themselves at the head of the subscribers.

[C28-06 | source PDF 411–412]
I announced my ascent for October 1. I need hardly say that the whole city flocked to the departure point. The crowd arrived from every direction so simultaneously, and pressed so eagerly around the enclosure, that humanity obliged me to open the gates to relieve the neighboring streets, from which the cries of women stifled by the multitude could be heard on every side. This meant giving up a large part of the receipts; but I could not hesitate, and did not. What will doubtless seem surprising, and filled me with admiration, is that I suffered no loss from this concession. I am glad to offer this testimony to the Danes’ honesty: the people swept unwillingly into the enclosure threw their admission money on the ground, so repugnant was it to them to enter without paying! How far these plebeian scruples are from the aristocratic ease of the Moscow nobility, who settled comfortably into their carriages to enjoy, without opening their purses, an experiment that always involves such great expense!

[C28-07 | source PDF 412–413]
The beauty of the ascent repaid the public for its support. At least they showed as much by the liveliness of their joy and applause when I left the ground to follow the course traced ahead of me by a small advance balloon, whose ribbons Her Royal Highness Princess Juliani had deigned to cut. It is no exaggeration to say that seventy thousand people clapped their hands at the moment of my departure. Some ladies were so overcome that they fainted. The concern shown around them attracted all my attention; I shall never forget how this incident kept my eyes fixed on the ground while my balloon carried me away from it so rapidly, and almost without my knowing.

[C28-08 | source PDF 413–414]
A few days earlier, by climbing the remarkable Observatory tower, I had been able to judge the spectacle awaiting me in the air. One reaches the top of this tower without getting out of one’s carriage. From there, besides the city’s buildings, one can easily see the sea, the island of Zealand, and the Swedish coast. But one can imagine how much the scene had expanded from the height to which my balloon had carried me, and what a magnificent observatory I occupied. Like a sovereign I commanded those straits that nature has made the gates of the Baltic, entrusting their keys to Denmark. I hovered between two seas, whose appearance warned me not to trust too much to the fickleness of the winds unless I wished to become the Icarus of the Sound or the North Sea. After rising beyond the sight of the spectators on the ground, I therefore began to descend and came directly above a meadow belonging to the village of Estrup, where my car alighted. During the ascent I had observed that for more than three-quarters of an hour the mercury in the barometer had neither risen nor fallen by a tenth of a line.

[C28-09 | source PDF 414–414]
On reaching the ground I found myself surrounded by a cavalcade of young men from the city. Soon the people joined them, and the crowd escorted me amid applause all the way to the hotel where I was staying.

[C28-10 | source PDF 414–416]
A memory of a historical kind is associated for me with this ascent, recalled to my mind only a few years ago by reading an article in the newspaper Le Voleur. Its author maintained that King Christian VII of Denmark, whom all biographies describe as dying mad, and whom all Europe regarded as such in the last years of his life, had never suffered mental derangement, and that motives of political ambition had skillfully contrived and exploited this supposed madness. The opinion illuminated my memory. I recalled that when I approached the grand marshal of the court about preparations for my ascent, this nobleman, while showering me with every mark of kindness, had nevertheless instructed me, if the king came up to question me, not to answer, whatever he might ask. He even declared that if I acted otherwise I risked being deprived of the court’s marks of generosity. The condition seemed rather strange, but I thought little about it, not knowing whether the king would see fit to concern himself with me and my experiments. While I was busy filling my balloon, Christian entered the enclosure I had reserved for myself and expressed a desire to know how the gas was produced. I found myself in a rather embarrassing situation, especially as the grand marshal had at that very instant cast a most significant glance at me. I therefore turned a deaf ear and bent down, tapping my barrels and seeming absorbed in listening to the bubbling within. But Christian came still closer and, touching me lightly on the shoulder, said very calmly, with a little severity: “Sir, when I do you the honor of speaking to you, kindly have the politeness to answer.” It was then quite impossible for me to do otherwise. Besides, I myself blushed at a gratuitous discourtesy so alien to our manners. I gave the king all the explanations he wished for, and he seemed to grasp them perfectly. The marshal understood the difficulty of my position and said nothing more about it. But may we not suppose that the intention had been to let the numerous spectators at my experiment believe that the king must be saying extravagant things to me, and that I was choosing not to answer a madman!

[C28-11 | source PDF 416–417]
From the night following that day I retain another memory of a very different kind, and an impression I believe I can still feel. It is easy to imagine how much, after an ascent before so great a multitude, the aeronaut’s mind must be affected by the excitement of which he was both witness and object. His spirits have also been affected by uncertainty over success, for however well the arrangements for such an experiment have been made, the smallest omission or lack of foresight can cause it to fail. Once one has set a whole city in motion, the thought of the responsibility resting upon one is no small anxiety. Then, when the great labor is at last over, the scene enacted, the tremendous tumult succeeded by the silence of aerial solitude and then the triumphant return, comes isolation in an inn in the midst of a foreign city, without friends or family with whom to unburden oneself, confide one’s pride, and share the joy of success. Sleep, often difficult, comes to close such a day upon a mind susceptible to every disturbance, which the smallest incident can trouble and startle awake.

[C28-12 | source PDF 417–419]
Such was my state of mind as I withdrew to my room, with the receipts beside my bed. I had put them away uncounted, so urgently did fatigue demand rest, but I had correctly estimated them at more than twenty thousand francs. It was two in the morning, and my eyelids had only just closed with difficulty, when terrible, seemingly half-stifled cries suddenly disturbed my sleep. Seized with terror, I listened. The cries continued, then came groans, with the words: “Oh my God! My God! He is going to die!” Soon there was a distinct rattling breath, gradually slowing, and finally profound silence, as though all were over… It was certainly a scene worth painting: me sitting on my bed, covered in cold sweat, hair standing on end, eager to listen and afraid of hearing too much. There could be no doubt about the explanation of this mystery: villains had meant to murder me for my money and had mistaken the room. Who knew? My turn might be coming… These thoughts, and the scene I had heard, inflamed my imagination. I jumped out of bed, opened the window, and began shouting “Fire! Murder!” My cries woke no one, for my room looked out onto a large garden. I had to spend the night dressed and in terrors that only daylight could end. As soon as it appeared, I hurried to find the innkeeper and ask whom he had lodged in the room next to mine. “A young man and a young woman,” he replied. “They arrived in Copenhagen only yesterday, solely to attend your ascent.” “The poor souls!” I said. “They were murdered last night.” “What are you saying?” exclaimed the innkeeper, his face changing and every limb trembling. I then told him the whole scene of the night. We both went upstairs at once; he knocked softly at the room of the crime. Someone came to open the door cautiously, walking on tiptoe. It was the young woman in her morning undress; fatigue marked her charming face, and one could see that she had been crying. My host asked what had happened and briefly explained how frightened I had been. The poor young woman’s eyes filled with tears. She told us that her husband had suffered an extremely violent epileptic seizure during the night, and she had feared he would die. He was resting now… She had no longer dared sleep, and remained weeping beside him at the sight of his exhaustion and the traces of the seizure still on his face. We comforted the unfortunate woman as well as we could and offered every service in our power.

[C28-13 | source PDF 419–421]
The impression of that night did not vanish immediately, I admit, and troubled me for several days. But other thoughts soon occupied me entirely. My ascent had been too brilliant and had won me too much favor with the inhabitants for me not to give the celebration a sequel. Besides, I had a still more marvelous spectacle to put before their eyes. They had seen a man fly toward the clouds, carried by a machine that brought him back to earth. I must astonish them still more by showing them the most audacious thing mortals have dared: a man abandoning the wandering globe from which his life, as it were, hangs, and relinquishing, six or eight hundred toises above the ground, the power to delay or slow his fall. I resolved to carry out the parachute descent. It took place at the same location as the ascent, on October 8, 1806. The astonishment and admiration were no less than I had foreseen. The wind was blowing at departure, and fifteen pounds of ascending force seemed insufficient to me. One can readily understand that the wind’s power tends to drive the balloon horizontally, so that it needs a much greater effort to resist that impulse while already overcoming the obstacle of gravity. It nevertheless rose to a height of eight hundred toises. A pistol shot gave the signal, and instantly the parachute and balloon were seen to separate, one rising into space, the other falling toward the ground. The parachute did not open immediately; a gust of wind suddenly opened it and then set it swinging. The public watched with interest and saw that man had not miscalculated in his struggle with the elements. The parachute touched the ground. Unfortunately, it was not rescued quickly enough from public enthusiasm: to prove how highly they valued my marvelous machine, these good Danes rushed at the parachute and tore it into pieces to make relics of it. Everyone carried away a little piece; some even took two or three to give to their relatives and friends.

[C28-14 | source PDF 421–421]
The king and his entire family had attended this experiment.

[C28-15 | source PDF 421–422]
Nothing remained but to thank the hosts who had welcomed me so well, and my memories of Copenhagen would end there if I did not still have a few words to say about a certain personage remarkable for its physical dimensions and prodigious strength, since six to eight people were not too great a weight for its muscles. One morning I saw several young men staying at the hotel cross the courtyard toward the stable; at the same time my host was calling loudly to me. I hurried downstairs and found myself before an immense turtle, armored in a shell five to six feet long. People stood around it in amazement; several had already climbed onto its moving shield. Eight of us climbed aboard, and it walked without seeming much concerned by the burden. This was indeed the queen of turtles: if it did not carry a house on its back, it carried all its inhabitants. I wanted to buy this enormous shelled creature and even offered a very reasonable price, three to four hundred francs as I remember. My plan was to have a large perforated crate made in which to confine it. The crate would be attached to the ship, and it would thus reach Saint Petersburg, where I thought public curiosity would amply repay the purchase. But my host had assigned it a different destination, and the onlookers had applauded his plan. Two days later, fifty to sixty diners assembled in a room of the hotel, at twenty francs a head:

[C28-16 | source PDF 422–422]
The turtle there appeared in splendid array…

[C28-17 | source PDF 422–422]
It was a dish of some size; and since that time I have no longer laughed at Homer having whole roast pigs brought to his heroes’ table.

[C28-18 | source PDF 422–423]
It was time to leave Copenhagen. It was November, a season when the sea is subject to tempests and the fury of the winds. A Russian naturalist, M. Duginine, was preparing at the same time to return to Saint Petersburg, but had firmly decided to go overland. He urged me most strongly to accompany him through northern Sweden. I was too impatient to rejoin my family and resisted his entreaties—I might even say his threats, for he began playing Cassandra, predicting a thousand mishaps and a tempest of the kind found in Virgil. The oracles prophesied no worse to Aeneas when he went in search of Latium. For my part, I was going much farther, into a sea unknown to the Trojan leader and toward a very familiar land. Consequently, all good M. Duginine’s comparisons failed to frighten me; I maintained that they lacked accuracy. We shall soon see who was right.

[C28-19 | source PDF 423–424]
As no ship was leaving for Russia, we had to wait a whole month for an opportunity. This delay carried us ever farther into the stormy season. At last a small vessel sailed for Riga. We went out to join it a quarter of a league offshore, where it was waiting for us. During this preliminary journey I had something of a foretaste of shipwreck. The sailors, knowing they were carrying Robertson, wanted to discover whether he was as fearless on the waves as in the air. They amused themselves by sailing close to the wind, and hauled their sails so tight that the stones serving as ballast in the bottom of the boat shifted to one side and very nearly capsized it. That moment might have ended my balloon voyages. I never learned to swim, and however light I may appear in the air, I should have proved heavy enough to sink to the bottom. Nevertheless, I bravely endured the joke, charitably warning them not to repeat it. They had gone farther than they intended and did not try again. We arrived safe and sound aboard the Hedvig-Christine, Captain Philippson.

[C28-20 | source PDF 424–424]
We sailed briskly out of the channel; the next day we were on the open sea. The waves would soon remind me of M. Duginine.

[Original illustration: chapter-twenty-eight-tailpiece.png]
Original landscape tailpiece at the close of Volume II, Chapter XII.

Editorial record

The French national and political judgments, the fleet description, and the sarcasm about English good faith belong to Robertson’s account. The translation does not silently revise them.

Kierstrup’s obscene bilingual anagram is deliberately withheld in the original. Its French-adjective/German-noun explanation and Roman-god allusion are retained without an invented solution.

Names and forms including Rosemborg, Princess Juliani, Estrup, Duginine and Hedvig-Christine follow the source. Christiern VII is rendered by the standard English form Christian VII.

The ascent is dated October 1; the parachute demonstration is explicitly dated October 8, 1806. All dates, crowd estimates, monetary sums and original units are retained as printed.

The statement that the barometer changed by less than a tenth of a line for over three-quarters of an hour is retained as Robertson reports it.

The claim about Christian VII’s supposed madness is explicitly attributed first to an article in Le Voleur and then to Robertson’s interpretation of his encounter; it is not an editorial medical finding.

The parachute passage describes the spectacle as a man’s descent but does not identify a passenger or explicitly state that Robertson himself jumped. His earlier explanation of a dummy demonstration in Volume II, Chapter VII should be kept in view. The present wording is retained without adding a participant or a mechanism.

The single verse line about the turtle remains separate from the prose. Its exaggerated dimensions and carrying capacity are retained as authorial assertions.

All 18 consecutive numbered text pages 393–410 were compared. There are no original footnotes in this chapter. The opening rule and the previously unrecognized boat-and-ruins tailpiece on page 410 are preserved.

Volume II, Chapter XIII

A terrible storm on the Baltic. Phosphorescent waves. A candle as thick as a ship’s mast. The deserted Baltic. Gold is taken and paper left behind. The battle of Jena and the post horses. A journey in Constantine’s manner. Here I am a Russian. Not for long.

[C29-01 | source PDF 425–426]
One evening at nightfall I was sitting at the ship’s stern with my traveling companion. We were both silent, absorbed in contemplating that vast expanse of water over which we flew rapidly, while nothing around us gave evidence of our movement. The sight of the open sea plunges the soul into an astonishing monotony of sensations. We were near the rudder, and a favorable wind blew violently. I should have liked to add still more to its force and make its progress as swift as a balloon’s, so eager was I to arrive. The vessel was making seven knots—that is, covering about four thousand toises in a quarter of an hour. The captain did not seem as satisfied as I was with the liveliness of our pace. I noticed his anxiety and that of the sailors. When I asked the reason, he pointed to a small black spot, alone on the horizon behind us, gradually rising. The sea grew rougher and rougher; the waves began swelling and rolling over one another in little mountains, then grew to prodigious size. As they were driven onward, a vast hollow opened behind them. One would admire this spectacle if one could stand, as at the Diorama, outside the picture. It had begun: the tempest was unleashed, surrendering the waves as playthings to the hurricane. Imagine a deep valley, an immense funnel, into whose center the ship plunges as though swallowed up, only to rise no less abruptly above the wave. At the bottom of the precipice one sees nothing around one, and far above one’s head, but mountains of water. From the crest of the wave one then commands, for only a minute, the whole convulsed surface of the sea, and finds a new abyss at one’s feet. Thus, from abyss to abyss and crest to crest, one advances through this chaos of waves amid the terrible struggle of two elements.

[C29-02 | source PDF 426–427]
Naturally, we had no courage beyond the captain’s. He alone knew the full danger, and we tried to read our fate in his eyes. Yet a phenomenon I had never witnessed caught my attention and diverted my naturally observant mind. While the captain and sailors hurried to collect the objects on deck and tie most of them down with ropes, I gazed in astonishment at the sea’s color and brilliance. It seemed entirely on fire, especially when it struck the ship. The planks then retained this phosphorescent light for a few seconds even after the water had withdrawn. I collected some of this luminous substance on the outside of my hat and went down into the captain’s cabin to examine it by lamplight, for darkness had suddenly enveloped us. I shall give my opinion of this phenomenon later.

[C29-03 | source PDF 427–429]
Meanwhile the bad weather continued to worsen. The captain put on a sealskin coat and, fearing he might be swept away by one of the waves that sometimes rose over the deck, passed a rope around his body. He ordered us down into the little cabin where we slept. Scarcely had we passed through the small hatch when it was closed over our heads, nailed down, and carefully caulked. This made a painful impression on us: it seemed as though we had been shut into a coffin. The ship’s jolts were terrible. Unable to remain upright without clinging with both hands to whatever surrounded us, we climbed into the little cupboards called our beds. There, with our whole bodies supported, we could at least resist the ship’s rolling and pitching. My traveling companion maintained absolute silence and wore the expression of a condemned man taking one step after another toward the place of execution. Throughout the entire storm he did not utter a single word. Stretched out as one lies at sea, we plainly could not maintain a horizontal position. At one moment I was almost standing upright on my feet; at another my legs were in the air and my head down. As for the furniture and various belongings in our cabin, they were continually moving house: as the ship leaned right or left, they followed the slope, all rolling to one side and, a moment later, all returning to the other. Despite the precaution of caulking around the hatch, water found its way in and flooded our floor. We were not lying on beds of roses.

[C29-04 | source PDF 429–430]
I confess that I scarcely thought of overcoming M. Michaud’s silence. I was too occupied with fear and reflection to be capable of speech. An involuntary association made me compare that night with the one at Copenhagen, when I had likewise trembled for my life and fortune. I pictured all the turmoil of an artist’s existence: so many hardships, so many perils to win a little glory and wealth! If, after so many setbacks, one finally reaches one’s goal, it is just at the moment of reaching another, which takes one away from the fruits of one’s labor and reveals their vanity. Amid these fine meditations, interspersed with continual and always sudden frights, the ship’s clock struck midnight. I heard the hatch being unnailed, and the captain came down to us looking gloomy and resigned. “Well,” I said, “the storm…” “It is going badly, very badly,” he replied. Without adding anything, he began gathering all the papers relating to his voyage, enclosed them in a tin box, and fastened them to his chest. This precaution was a bad omen. The captain was doubtless beginning to despair of our safety. M. Michaud watched him with a seemingly dazed expression, but understood him all too well.

[C29-05 | source PDF 430–431]
While the captain was thus occupied, I ventured to put my nose up to the hatchway. Imagination cannot picture the horrible whistling of the wind through the rigging. The ropes, each according to its thickness, gave different sounds like prolonged bellowing, which, amid the thunderclaps and the ship’s repeated creaking, formed diabolical notes and infernal music. This fine uproar lasted all the rest of the night, and only toward ten in the morning did they consent to open our almost sepulchral vault. Even then we did not emerge until we had looked several times through the hatchway. As far from the coast as we were, it seemed clear that no boat could ever have saved passengers from such a shipwreck: amid those waves it would have been submerged twenty times in an hour. Yet the sea, although it had lost much of its fury, was still not calm. “She will sulk at us for a week before settling down,” the captain told me. Thus the elements resemble ourselves: a man’s anger, when very violent, does not end all at once. The agitation of his nerves and muscles, as well as his mental faculties, continues after his wrath has ceased. In the same way, so monstrous a mass of water, once set in motion, recovers its equilibrium only after long oscillations. It then resembles a lion that retreats and turns back roaring: its threats remain appalling even when they have become powerless.

[C29-06 | source PDF 431–432]
At last we were saved! To which Our Lady of Good Help did we owe our thanks? Without knowing it, we owed them to M. Michaud. If he said nothing during the storm, he thought all the more. The hurricane was not yet so far away that my companion believed he could break his word with impunity, for he had made a silent promise. He came to me, deeply embarrassed, speaking of a rash vow, then refused to confess it. At last, when I pressed him, he declared with the most comical embarrassment that he had solemnly sworn to the good Virgin of Nazareth that, if she let us escape, as soon as he reached land he would dedicate to her a candle as thick as the ship’s largest mast… Uncontrollable laughter seized me at this confession. It took every imaginable effort, and all my fear of his resentment, not to entertain the captain and sailors with this amusing invention. Did he fulfill his votive offering? For my part I never saw it, but I have not visited every chapel of the blessed Virgin in Europe. I therefore dare not accuse him of once again confirming the Italian proverb: “Once the danger has passed, the saint is cheated.”

[C29-07 | source PDF 432–432]
This rashness born of fear shows what strange ideas danger produces, though this one may certainly seem the most singular that any tempest ever inspired. Nevertheless, I admit that even the most heedless man cannot contemplate the effects of such disorder in nature, and feel beneath his feet the trembling of the mere plank that separates him from the abyss, ready to split open or be swallowed up, without involuntarily raising his thoughts to heaven. He cannot help seeking reconciliation with the only power that sees and hears him, stands between him and death, and whose will alone can bring his destruction or salvation.

[C29-08 | source PDF 432–433]
How often, amid my fears, had I regretted not taking the overland route with M. Duginine! He had been right to tell me that the Baltic Sea was little frequented at that season. We met only one vessel, near the island of Christianso, escaping in great haste from one of the many ports of that sea where most ships are forced to winter. Our captain, on the contrary, feared arriving too soon, lest the remaining agitation of the water should run us aground. All sails had been taken down, and a great quantity of ropes thrown into the sea, which the ship dragged behind it to slow its progress a little. Nevertheless, we entered the harbor without mishap and dropped anchor. The sea was still so rough that a cable broke during the night and we lost the stronger of our two anchors. Four days passed before the customs officers dared venture out to inspect us and give us permission to disembark… At last we stood on a floor that no longer shook beneath our feet: we were ashore!

[C29-09 | source PDF 433–434]
Only on emerging from such anguish does a man fully feel the blessing of life and the happiness of existing! Nor can this condition be compared with that of a patient happily rescued from a mortal crisis. Health returns gradually; convalescence keeps one long on the borders of illness, and weakness necessarily follows pain. For us, however, it was an instantaneous passage from death to life, with all our faculties intact: the thrill of the unfortunate man receiving his pardon just as he sets foot on the ladder. M. Michaud was radiant, and perhaps I was no less so. But I did not have his flood of words, doubtless accumulated within and now inevitably needing to pour out. I thought our frightened friend was about to boast of his stoicism. But when he happened to complain of the candle that gave us very poor light, I said, “Indeed, my dear M. Michaud, it is no match for your votive candle!” He sulked at me a little and spoke much less. Having found our carriage in good condition, we left the next day for Saint Petersburg.

[C29-10 | source PDF 434–435]
I was all the more cheerful because I had indeed been fortunate. Besides escaping the Baltic Sea, I had just had the further good fortune to evade the vigilance of the customs. If exporting gold and silver from Russia is forbidden, bringing paper money back in once it has left is also prohibited—a system which, reduced to its simplest expression, means: we keep the gold; you keep the paper. Now, I was bringing fifteen to twenty thousand rubles back from my journey. I could think of no expedient except padding my boots and clothes with them. The Russian officials did not exercise their ingenuity in detecting this kind of lining, and I passed through intact.

[C29-11 | source PDF 435–437]
We continued our journey the following day. At Stelna, the last posting station before Saint Petersburg, we were refused horses. Here is why. As I was leaving Denmark, great events had just taken place on land. While the elements battled at sea, another storm, no less destructive in nature, had thundered over the continent. If the wreckage of one had been driven onto the coasts, the other had likewise strewn Prussian soil with ruins and corpses. Napoleon had just won the famous battle of Jena, after warning his brother William that he would lose it and urging him to make peace. General Ney had completed the campaign’s success by taking Magdeburg. The fugitives who escaped these swift disasters had sought refuge wherever they hoped to be welcomed. Many had withdrawn to Altona; some had even come to Copenhagen. These new triumphs of Napoleon must have carried alarm into the heart of Russia. The police kept strict watch on every road. When we reached the next-to-last posting station before Saint Petersburg, we were therefore told that there were no horses and that several hours would probably pass before any could be supplied. I have no doubt that at the sight of a Frenchman a courier had immediately been sent to the police superintendent: some secret mission must have been feared or suspected. Indeed, I soon recognized M. Herstel, who had arrived from Saint Petersburg as a traveler. I pretended not to know who he was. He did not speak to me either; but after making inquiries and satisfying himself that I was not coming from France, he secretly ordered that horses be provided. Once in Saint Petersburg, where the government, as may readily be imagined, did not publish bulletins of our victories, I found it very difficult to remain silent about my compatriots’ successes and our generals’ new laurels. The police were informed. M. Herstel summoned me, reproached me for my indiscretion, and pronounced the great word intended to correct or punish it. Indeed, I believe he saw me shudder at the word “Siberia.” I became more circumspect.

[C29-12 | source PDF 437–438]
Had I not seen with my own eyes how swiftly the absolute orders of authority are executed in that empire—how, at power’s command, they hasten without delay or respite to break every tie binding one to the city, to family, and to private interests—an incident at Warsaw in 1829 under Grand Duke Constantine could have taught me. It was during Russia’s last war against the Turks. News of the capture of Varna had just spread through the city. A foreigner arrived at a hotel and, speaking of the event on everyone’s lips, said quite innocently that Varna had not yet been taken. The following morning, expecting nothing and busy unpacking his belongings, he was told that the grand duke had summoned him. Such an announcement alone was usually enough to plunge its recipient into anxiety. “What does the grand duke want with me?” the man said. “My passport is in order, and he has already seen it.” Nevertheless, he went to Constantine’s palace. “So you are the gentleman,” the grand duke said, “who maintains that the city of Varna has not been taken. Very well! You will leave this instant and verify the fact with your own eyes. On your return, you will tell us what you think.” All the poor merchant’s entreaties achieved nothing; he was not even allowed to plead for very long. Without time to return to his hotel to put his affairs in order or change his clothes, he was made to get into a sleigh and, in one continuous journey, was taken there and brought back to Warsaw at his own expense. That was indeed a trick in Constantine’s manner. Ever since being told the story, I have counted myself fortunate to have fallen into the hands of the police superintendent rather than those of the viceroy.

[C29-13 | source PDF 438–439]
I stayed in Saint Petersburg only as long as was strictly necessary to rest a little. Since we were in the season when, thanks to sleighs, Russian leagues become miles and three count as one, I traveled the road from Saint Petersburg to Moscow very swiftly. I soon found myself among my family, richer than when I left, my memory and imagination full of recollections, full of picturesque images of the countries I had visited, and also of the dangers I had faced on the angry waves of the Baltic.

[C29-14 | source PDF 439–439]
As the owner, as we have seen, of a large house in Moscow, and not yet thinking of leaving Russia, which had been a land of fortune for me, I should have been painfully affected if one of those circumstances more imperious than any human will had forced me to leave suddenly. Yet that very thing nearly happened. Napoleon’s victories, in which I took patriotic pride, came close to ruining me in part. I found myself in a difficult position: the repercussions of the conquest of Prussia and the Berlin Decree establishing the Continental System were the expulsion from the Russian Empire of all Frenchmen, Italians, and, in general, inhabitants of states annexed to or allied with France. They were permitted to remain on one condition only: taking the oath of a subject.

[C29-15 | source PDF 439–441]
I admit that the terms of this oath were such as to greatly trouble the consciences of many Frenchmen. Yet I believe that in such a case one may consider for oneself the particular consequences it can entail for the individual taking it. I was certainly sure that I should never have anything to do against my country’s interests; my occupations, my habits, and the distance I had always kept from political affairs and associations guaranteed that. Who, in my place, would suddenly have renounced, without any real advantage to his country or countrymen, the fruits of so many years’ work and the only resources for a young family’s future? Who would not have said, as I did—not, certainly, “Where I prosper, there is my country,” for the country remains no less in the heart because it is no longer on the lips, but rather, “Where my fortune is, there are my household gods”—where my wealth is, there are my protecting gods of home? Besides, is an oath truly valid when it is wrung from you under threat of being robbed? No: any oath demanded at the price of your life or your legitimately acquired fortune is one you are not free to refuse, for it is demanded with a pistol at your throat. Many Frenchmen nevertheless left Saint Petersburg and Moscow then, some from fear and others from scruple. What came of it? Most returned in less than a year, almost entirely ruined. They were received neither well nor badly in France, where no account was taken of their devotion, and they received no sympathy in Russia, where their departure had been resented. Here I am, then, a Russian henceforth, but with the sweet prospect and constant hope of soon becoming French again. Here the form does not override the substance.

[C29-16 | source PDF 441–441]
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

Editorial record

The printed speed equivalence, seven knots and about 4,000 toises in a quarter-hour, is retained although the quantities do not agree under the usual definitions. No corrected speed is silently substituted.

Robertson promises to discuss the sea’s phosphorescence later, but no such explanation follows in the remaining text of this volume. The promise is retained; no missing explanation is invented.

The Italian proverb Passato il pericolo, è gabato il santo is translated in the English text. The French comparison retains the printed Italian spelling.

The captain’s huit jours is rendered idiomatically as a week. Monetary sums, four days waiting for customs, the stated times, and the other quantities follow the printed narrative.

Napoleon’s brother William is a sovereign’s diplomatic brother, not a claim about Napoleon’s biological family. The author’s wording is retained in the text.

The same episode calls the posting station both the last and the next-to-last before St. Petersburg; both statements are retained. Stelna and Herstel follow the source forms.

The Warsaw anecdote explicitly bears the date 1829 in the printed text; the date is retained without silently reconstructing the chronology.

The Latin Ubi benè, ibi patria and Ubi fortuna, ibi penates are translated in place. Robertson’s own French gloss of the second is also retained, rather than omitted as repetition.

The contrast between leagues and miles in winter is a figurative description of the speed of sleigh travel; it is not treated as a literal conversion of units.

All 17 consecutive text pages 411–427 were compared. No original author footnotes occur here. The original opening rule and the explicit end-of-volume statement are retained.

Volume II: Original Contents and Publisher’s Catalogue

[V2B-001 | source PDF 443–443]
Contents of This Volume

[Original illustration: v2-back-matter-contents-divider.png]


[V2B-002 | source PDF 443–443]
Chapter I. Complete works and events. Revolutions in France, Belgium and Poland. M. Surlet de Chokier. Life at Plombières. Gambling and the secrets of a roulette table. Madame Bonaparte and the Capuchin’s Hole. General Ney and the balcony. A man cut in two. The hundred-and-ten-year-old man. The decline of my ghosts. Fitz-James’s desertion. Services rendered by balloons to the armies of the Sambre-and-Meuse and the Rhine. A Montgolfier balloon in Egypt. Bonaparte and the muftis. The Turkish ambassador to the Directory. Garnerin’s first parachute experiment. — 1

[V2B-003 | source PDF 443–443]
Chapter II. Journeys from Paris to Saint Petersburg, thirty years apart. Gold beneath one’s feet. The red coats. The merchant barber. Hamburg’s prosperity. General Moreau in exile. Everything for money. Garnerin and Counselor d’Hermbstaedt. Letters from the professor. The Hamburg Senate’s strange fears. A stormy debut. The splendid ascent of July 18. — 38

[V2B-004 | source PDF 443–443]
Chapter III. Stops in the air. How high a balloon can rise. The shape of clouds and their appearance from above. Atmospheric experiments. Analysis of the air brought back. War on Hamburg’s lightning conductors. The little gardens and the pretty girls. My experiments repeated by Messrs. Biot and Gay-Lussac. No salvation outside the Institute. Fire pistons, despite the Academy of Sciences. Why M. Gay-Lussac rather than me? — 84

[V2B-005 | source PDF 443–444]
Chapter IV. Paul I and the transformation of beasts. Laffecteur’s Rob and the Cross of Saint Anne. Sailing on ice. The city of a century. Death of Paul I. The autocrat and the republican. The grand duke and the actor. Paul I bareheaded. The tsar’s loves. Bonaparte’s seraglio. The streets of Paris and Saint Petersburg. Enamels of Henry II. The painter Caraffe. The First Consul without a head. M. Lovitz and filtered water. An ascent with M. Sacharoff. — 119

[V2B-006 | source PDF 444–444]
Chapter V. The tsar as a Jacobin. M. Garnerin’s escapade. An appetite for candle ends. The Russians as great eaters. A small meal before dinner. Journey to Riga. Portrait of Kotzebue. Account of the Riga ascent. A new appearance of the clouds. Basket anchors. The postmaster and the actress. The dreary appearance of the roads. Portable houses. The sleeping post. Visit to M. Cobentzel. The speaking crucifix. The hole that reopens. The angel who kills himself. The cross of Migné. The priest, his flock and the sheep. — 175

[V2B-007 | source PDF 444–444]
Chapter VI. The first hot-air balloon in Vienna. Blanchard’s two failures in three attempts. A letter dated from the sky. The surroundings of Vienna. The emperor’s good nature. A beautiful but useless sail. M. Degen’s vocation. M. Mayer’s unfortunate attempts. Revenge in verses. A double parachute. A phantasmagoria room. The Temple of Night. Fine thunder. A moving rotunda. The tremophore. An overturned carriage and an improvised inn. The frontier Cossack gentlemen. A blow from the barrier. The king of Mittau. A northern landscape in January. — 211

[V2B-008 | source PDF 444–445]
Chapter VII. The baptism of the Neva. Why the Russian hills did not last in France. Women’s finery on Nevsky Prospect. The pleasure and art of sliding downhill. Sleighing. Pig markets. Blocks of ice. The Nativity of Jesus Christ and the apostles’ blond wigs. The exile of the Jesuits. The New Year’s ball. Alexander judged by women. The marriage of the prince of Saxe-Weimar. A party given by Barras. Grand Chamberlain Nariskin. M. Rospini’s dancer. M. Maëtzel’s bass player. Rapid heating. — 241

[V2B-009 | source PDF 445–445]
Chapter VIII. Count d’Hédouville. M. de Renneval. M. Saucerotte’s family. Stray dogs. Russian baths. River bathing at Wilna. Impressions in the snow. Precautions against the cold. Curious signs. Crows in the streets. The muzhiks’ clothing. The painter Orlosky. — 266

[V2B-010 | source PDF 445–445]
Chapter IX. A journey to Archangel. Frozen noses. Manners and appearance. Summer after winter. Treacherous fine days. Birds set free. The lungs of Polyphemus. The court library. The emperor on the watch. His Majesty on an amorous adventure. The good empress. A charming swarm of young ladies. Prince Bobrinsky. God better than his saints. Sale of my collection to the Academy. A puppet and the grand duke. A four-share plow. — 287

[V2B-011 | source PDF 445–445]
Chapter X. The old and new roads from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. Russian Tsiganes. The appearance of old Moscow. The people’s summer dress. The devil’s friend. A horse in a balloon. The celebrated conjurer Pinetti. The headless man. Gold pieces in little pies. The king of Prussia and the charlatan. The vanishing aeronauts. A sad end. Purchase of a hotel. Spontaneous combustion of a balloon. A fall into the sea. An aeronautical Robinson. Horn music. A thrashing. Water nymphs. Prostitution housed by priests. Women of pleasure. Swindling in various classes. A masterpiece by Canova. The fine arts in Russia. — 311

[V2B-012 | source PDF 445–446]
Chapter XI. Departure for Sweden. The Jesuits of Polosk. Men turned into little actors. A Jesuit dancing on a steeple. A maritime Eden. The appearance of Stockholm. Gustavus Adolphus. Count de Fersen. A gentleman in costume. A beautiful panorama. A plan for suicide from a balloon. Charles V at the Pantheon. Cracked brains. Gustavus III. Gustavus Vasa’s house. The mines of Falhun. Stockholm’s islands and rocks. Inland roads. Arrival in Copenhagen. — 353

[V2B-013 | source PDF 446–446]
Chapter XII. Activity in Copenhagen and its harbor. The character of German cities. Grand Marshal de Hauch. Kierstrup’s failure. A warm welcome. Danish honesty. Ascent between two seas. An anecdote about King Christian’s supposed madness. Terror in the night. The parachute as relics. A monstrous personage. Duginine’s prediction. A dangerous prank by some sailors. — 381

[V2B-014 | source PDF 446–446]
Chapter XIII. A terrible storm on the Baltic. Phosphorescent waves. A candle as thick as a ship’s mast. The deserted Baltic. Gold is taken and paper left behind. The battle of Jena and the post horses. A journey in Constantine’s manner. Here I am a Russian. Not for long. — 411

[V2B-015 | source PDF 446–446]
End of the Contents of the Second Volume.

[V2B-016 | source PDF 447–447]
Collection of Manuals. Eighteenmo Format. Forming an Encyclopedia of the Sciences and Arts, by a Group of Scholars and Practitioners.

[V2B-017 | source PDF 447–447]
Messrs. Amoros, director of the Gymnasium; Arsenne, painter; Boisduval, naturalist; Bosc, of the Institute; Choron, director of the Royal Institute of Music; Julia-Fontenelle, professor of chemistry; Lacroix, member of the Institute; Launay, founder of the column in Place Vendôme; Sébastien Lenormand, professor of technology; Lesson, correspondent of the Institute; Riffault, former director of gunpowder and saltpeter; Richard, professor; Terquem, professor at the royal schools; Thillaye, professor of chemistry; Toussaint, architect; Vergnaud; etc., etc.

[V2B-018 | source PDF 447–447]
All treatises are sold separately. The following are on sale; the others will appear successively. For delivery postpaid, add 50 centimes per eighteenmo volume. Most volumes contain 300 to 400 pages.

[V2B-019 | source PDF 447–447]
Astronomy, 2 fr. 50 c.
Land Surveying and the Art of Drawing Plans, 2 fr. 50 c.
Arithmetic, 2 fr. 50 c.
Algebra, 3 fr. 50 c.
Geometry, 3 fr. 50 c.
Chemistry, 3 fr. 50 c.
Recreational Chemistry, 3 fr.
Mechanics, 3 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-020 | source PDF 447–447]
Recreational Mathematics, 3 fr.
Chemical Products, 2 vols., 7 fr.
The Steam-Engine Builder, 2 fr. 50 c.
Optics, 2 vols., 6 fr.
Physics, 2 fr. 50 c.
Recreational Physics, 3 fr.
Sorcerers, or White Magic Unveiled, 3 fr.
Meteorology, 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-021 | source PDF 447–447]
Electricity, Lightning Conductors and Hail Protectors, 2 fr. 50 c.
Primary, Intermediate and Normal Schools, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Draftsman, 3 fr.
Perspective, 3 fr.
The Mapmaker, 3 fr.
Geography, 3 fr. 50 c.
Geography of France, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Traveler in Paris, 3 fr. 50 c. The Traveler in Its Surroundings, 3 fr.

[V2B-022 | source PDF 447–447]
Good Society, 2 fr. 50 c.
Young Men, or Sciences, Arts and Recreations Suited to Them, 2 vols., 6 fr.
Young Ladies, or Arts and Crafts Suited to Them, 3 fr.
Music, 1 fr. 50 c.
Dance, 3 fr. 50 c.
Gymnastics, 2 large vols. and atlas, 10 fr. 50 c.
Parlor Games, 3 fr.
Games of Calculation, or the Academy of Games, 3 fr.

[V2B-023 | source PDF 447–447]
Calligraphy, or the Art of Writing, 3 fr.
Letter-Writing Style, 3 fr.
Literature, 1 fr. 75 c.
Experimental Philosophy, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Speller, 2 fr. 50 c.
Biography, 2 vols., 6 fr.
Natural History, or Complete Genera, Containing the Three Kingdoms of Nature, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Mineralogy, 3 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-024 | source PDF 447–447]
Elementary Botany, 3 fr. 50 c.
French Flora, 3 vols., 10 fr. 50 c.
History of Crustaceans, 2 vols., 6 fr.
Entomology, or the Natural History of Insects, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Mollusks and Shells, 3 fr. 50 c.
Ornithology, or the History of Birds, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Mammalogy, or the Natural History of Mammals, 3 fr. 50 c.
Medical Natural History, 2 vols., 5 fr.

[V2B-025 | source PDF 447–447]
The Naturalist, or the Art of Stuffing Animals, 2 fr. 50 c.
Country Dwellers, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Herbalist, Grocer, Druggist, Seedsman and Nurseryman, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Plant Physiology, 3 fr.
The French Farmer, 2 vols., 5 fr.
The Forester, 2 vols., 5 fr.
The Gardener, 2 vols., 5 fr.
The Grower of Early Produce, 3 fr.

[V2B-026 | source PDF 447–447]
Bees and Silkworms, 3 fr.
The Animal Lover, or the Art of Raising Domestic Animals, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Exterminator of Harmful Animals, 3 fr.
The Hunter, 3 fr.
Rural Constables, 2 fr. 50 c.
Landlord and Tenant, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Practitioner, or a Treatise on the Science of Law, 3 fr. 50 c.
Municipal Officers, 3 fr.

[V2B-027 | source PDF 447–447]
Weights and Measures, 3 fr.
Direct Taxes, 2 fr. 50 c.
National Guardsmen, 1 fr. 25 c.
The Firefighter, 1 fr. 50 c.
Hygiene, or the Art of Preserving Health, 3 fr.
Ladies, or the Art of the Toilette, 3 fr.
The Mistress of the House and Perfect Housekeeper, 2 fr. 50 c.
Domestic Economy, 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-028 | source PDF 447–447]
Nurses, or the Art of Caring for Oneself and Others, 2 fr. 50 c.
Domestic Medicine and Surgery, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Veterinarian, 3 fr.
The Starch and Vermicelli Maker, 3 fr.
Architecture, or a Treatise on the Art of Building, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Measurement of Buildings, Part 1: Masonry, 2 fr. 50 c.
Part 2: Joinery, Painting, etc., 2 fr. 50 c.
The Firework, Saltpeter and Gunpowder Maker, 3 fr.

[V2B-029 | source PDF 447–447]
The Gunsmith and Sword Cutler, 3 fr.
The Banker, Stockbroker and Broker, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Jeweler, Gem-Setter and Goldsmith, 2 vols., 7 fr.
Bleaching and Laundering, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Hosier and Stocking Maker, 3 fr.
The Bootmaker and Shoemaker, 3 fr.
The Baker and Miller, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Harness Maker and Saddler, 3 fr.

[V2B-030 | source PDF 447–447]
The Brewer, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Cardboard Maker, Playing-Card Maker and Cardboard Goods Manufacturer, 3 fr.
The Carpenter, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Chamois-Leather Maker, Morocco-Leather Maker, Skin Dresser and Parchment Maker, 3 fr.
The Tallow and Wax Candle Maker, 3 fr.
The Pork Butcher, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Wheelwright and Coachbuilder, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Lime Burner: The Art of Making Mortars, Cements, etc., 3 fr.

[V2B-031 | source PDF 447–447]
The Hairdresser, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Male and Female Cook, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Distiller and Liqueur Maker, 3 fr.
The Cider and Perry Maker, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Woolen-Cloth Manufacturer, 3 fr. The Oil Manufacturer, 3 fr.
The Maker of Hats of Every Kind, 3 fr.
The Papermaker, 2 vols. and atlas, 10 fr. 50 c.
The Sugar Manufacturer, 3 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-032 | source PDF 447–447]
The Tinsmith and Lamp Maker, 3 fr.
The Artificial-Flower and Feather-Ornament Maker, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Founder in All Metals, 2 vols., 7 fr.
The Ironmaster, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Engraver in All Branches, 3 fr.
The Clockmaker, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Letterpress Printer, 3 fr.
The Refreshment Seller and Confectioner, 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-033 | source PDF 447–447]
Lithography, 3 fr.
The Wood and Coal Merchant, 3 fr.
The Mechanic, Fountain Maker and Plumber, 3 fr.
The Joiner and Cabinetmaker, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Plaster Molder, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Medal Caster, 1 fr. 50 c.
The Merchant and Manufacturer, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Perfumer, 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-034 | source PDF 447–447]
Popular Pharmacy, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Stationer and Paper Ruler, 3 fr.
The Pastry Cook, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Fisherman, 3 fr.
The House Painter, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Painter in Miniature, Gouache, Sepia Wash and Watercolor, 3 fr.
The History Painter and Sculptor, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Stove Maker and Chimney Specialist, 3 fr.

[V2B-035 | source PDF 447–447]
The Porcelain, Faience and Earthenware Maker, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Bookbinder, 3 fr.
The Soap Maker, 3 fr.
The Locksmith, 3 fr.
The Tailor, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Tanner and Currier, 3 fr. 50 c.
The Upholsterer, Decorator and Furniture Dealer, 2 fr. 50 c.
The Dyer and Cleaner, 3 fr.

[V2B-036 | source PDF 447–447]
The Bookkeeper in Single and Double Entry, 3 fr.
The Turner, 2 vols., 6 fr.
The Glassworker and Makers of Mirror Glass and Crystal, 3 fr.
The Vine Grower and the Art of Winemaking, 3 fr.
Gauging and Beverage Retailers, 3 fr.
The Vinegar and Mustard Maker, 3 fr.
The Maker of Printed Fabrics and Wallpaper, 3 fr.
The Printed-Cotton Manufacturer, 3 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-037 | source PDF 447–447]
The Stringed-Instrument Maker, 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-038 | source PDF 447–447]
For further details, see the catalogue, available free from the publisher.

[V2B-039 | source PDF 447–447]
Works in Press

[V2B-040 | source PDF 447–447]
Manuals of the Bibliophile and Book Lover; the Colorist; the Cutler; Commercial Correspondence; Chronology; Political Economy; the Organ Builder; Spinning in General and the Weaver; the Silk Manufacturer; General Geography; Geology; Faulty Expressions; the Mason, Plasterer, etc.; Vocal and Instrumental Music, by M. Choron; Mythology; Shorthand.

[Original illustration: v2-back-matter-catalogue-1.png]
Original publisher’s catalogue, first page. The complete list and prices are translated above.

[V2B-041 | source PDF 448–448]
Manual for Arbitrators, or a Treatise on the Principal Knowledge Required to Investigate and Judge Cases Submitted to Arbitration in Civil or Commercial Matters. Contains the principles, new laws, decisions issued since the publication of our Codes, and forms relating to arbitration. An indispensable work for those who agree to be appointed arbitrators or belong to the judiciary, as well as notaries, merchants, property owners, etc. By M. Ch., former jurist and author of the Manual for Experts. New edition. 8 fr.

[V2B-042 | source PDF 448–448]
Medical Voyage Around the World, undertaken aboard the king’s corvette La Coquille, commanded by Captain Duperrey, during 1822, 1823, 1824 and 1825; followed by a memoir on the human races distributed throughout Oceania, Malaysia and Australia. By M. Lesson. 1 octavo vol. 4 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-043 | source PDF 448–448]
A Tour Around the World, by M. Arago. 2 large volumes and an atlas of 25 plates. 35 fr.

[V2B-044 | source PDF 448–448]
Topographical Map of St. Helena, very finely engraved. 1 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-045 | source PDF 448–448]
Chemistry Applied to the Arts, by Chaptal, member of the Institute. New edition with additions by M. Guillery. 5 installments in a single large octavo volume, on large paper. 20 fr.

[V2B-046 | source PDF 448–448]
Elementary General Nosography, or Description and Rational Treatment of All Diseases. By M. Seigneur-Gens, doctor of the Paris Faculty. New edition. 4 octavo vols. 20 fr.

[V2B-047 | source PDF 448–448]
Code for Postmasters, Stagecoach and Freight-Haulage Contractors, and Carriers in General by Land and Water; or a General Collection of Council Decisions, Regulatory Judgments, Laws, Decrees, Orders, Royal Ordinances and Other Acts of Public Authority concerning postmasters, contractors for stagecoaches and public conveyances in general, freight contractors and forwarding agents, masters of passenger boats and other vessels, etc. By M. Lunoë, advocate at the Royal Court of Paris. 2 octavo vols. 12 fr.

[V2B-048 | source PDF 448–448]
The Rubens Gallery, Known as the Luxembourg Gallery, continuing the Galleries of Florence and the Palais-Royal. By Messrs. Mathei and Castel. 13 installments containing 25 plates. 1 large folio volume; the work is complete. Each installment with uncolored illustrations: 6 fr. With colored illustrations: 10 fr.

[V2B-049 | source PDF 448–448]
Memoirs on the War of 1809 in Germany, with the Particular Operations of the Corps of Italy, Poland, Saxony, Naples and Walcheren. By General Pelet, from his very detailed journal of the German campaign, his reconnaissance and various studies, and Napoleon’s correspondence with the major-general, marshals and commanders-in-chief; accompanied by supporting and unpublished documents. 4 octavo vols. 28 fr.

[V2B-050 | source PDF 448–448]
Historical Summary of the Revolutions in the Kingdoms of Naples and Piedmont in 1820 and 1821, followed by authentic documents concerning those events. By Count D… 2nd edition. 1 octavo vol. 4 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-051 | source PDF 448–448]
Trial of the Former Ministers. An exact and detailed account containing all the proceedings and pleadings, recorded by the best shorthand writers. 3rd edition. 3 large eighteenmo vols., illustrated with four steel-engraved portraits. 7 fr. 50 c. Nothing has been neglected to make this account as complete as possible. The trial sessions have been collated against Le Moniteur.

[V2B-052 | source PDF 448–448]
The Art of Preserving and Enhancing Beauty, and of Correcting and Concealing Nature’s Imperfections. By Lamy. 2 attractive eighteenmo vols., illustrated with engravings. 6 fr.

[V2B-053 | source PDF 448–448]
Ordinance on Infantry Drill and Maneuvers of March 4, 1831. School of the Soldier and Platoon. 1 eighteenmo vol., illustrated with figures. 75 c.

[V2B-054 | source PDF 448–448]
New Course of Translation Exercises for the Sixième, Cinquième, Quatrième, Troisième and Seconde Classes, for Use in Secondary Schools. By M. Planche, professor of rhetoric at the Royal Collège de Bourbon, and M. Carpentier. Recommended for secondary schools by the University’s Royal Council. 2nd edition, entirely recast and enlarged. 5 duodecimo vols. 10 fr. The same, with answer keys for teachers: 10 duodecimo vols. 22 fr. 50 c.
Sold separately:
Sixième course for pupils: 2 fr. Teacher’s answer key: 2 fr. 50 c.
Cinquième course for pupils: 2 fr. Answer key: 2 fr. 50 c.
Quatrième course for pupils: 2 fr. Answer key: 2 fr. 50 c.
Troisième course for pupils: 2 fr. Answer key: 2 fr. 50 c.
Seconde course for pupils: 2 fr. Answer key: 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-055 | source PDF 448–448]
Poetical Works of Boileau. New edition accompanied by notes on Boileau by the most distinguished commentators and literary scholars. By M. J. Planche, professor of rhetoric at the Royal Collège de Bourbon, and M. Noël, inspector-general of the University. 1 large duodecimo vol. 1 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-056 | source PDF 448–448]
Manual of Literature for Both Sexes. Contains a summary of rhetoric, a treatise on French versification, definitions of all the different kinds of prose and verse compositions, examples from the most celebrated prose writers and poets, and precepts for the art of reading aloud. By M. Vigée. 3rd edition, revised by the Countess d’Hautpoul. 1 eighteenmo vol. 1 fr. 75 c.

[V2B-057 | source PDF 448–448]
The Art of Embroidery, or a Collection of Colored Designs for the Different Branches of This Art, for Young Ladies. By Augustin Legrand. 1 oblong vol. 7 fr.

[V2B-058 | source PDF 448–448]
Science Taught Through Games, or a Scientific Theory of the Most Common Games, accompanied by historical research into their origins and serving as an introduction to the study of mechanics, physics, etc. Adapted from the English by M. Richard, professor of mathematics. Illustrated with numerous wood-engraved vignettes by M. Godard fils. 2 attractive eighteenmo vols. 7 fr.

[V2B-059 | source PDF 448–448]
The Beauties of Nature, or a Description of the Most Extraordinary and Admirable Trees, Plants, Cataracts, Springs, Volcanoes, Mountains, Mines, etc., Found in the Four Parts of the World. By M. Antoine. 1 vol., illustrated with six engravings. 2 fr. 50 c.

[V2B-060 | source PDF 448–448]
The Botany of J.-J. Rousseau. Contains everything he wrote on this science, enlarged with an exposition of the methods of Tournefort and Linnaeus, followed by a dictionary of botany and historical notes. By M. Deville. 2nd edition. 1 large vol., illustrated with 8 plates. 4 fr. With colored illustrations: 5 fr.

[V2B-061 | source PDF 448–448]
Famous Dogs. 5th edition, enlarged with new and curious instances of these animals’ instinct, services, courage, gratitude and fidelity. By M. Fréville. 1 large duodecimo vol., illustrated with plates. 3 fr.

[V2B-062 | source PDF 448–448]
Famous Animals. Historical anecdotes concerning instances of intelligence, skill, courage, kindness, affection, gratitude, etc., in animals of every kind. Illustrated with engravings. By M. Antoine. 2 duodecimo vols. 6 fr.

[V2B-063 | source PDF 448–448]
M. Graissinet, or What Is He, Then? A comic, satirical and truthful story, published by Duval. 4 duodecimo vols. 10 fr. This novel, written in the manner of Pigault’s, is one of the most entertaining we possess.

[V2B-064 | source PDF 448–448]
Thoughts and Maxims of Fénelon. 2 eighteenmo vols. Portrait. 3 fr.

[V2B-065 | source PDF 448–448]
Thoughts of J.-J. Rousseau. 2 eighteenmo vols. Portrait. 3 fr.
Thoughts of Voltaire. 2 eighteenmo vols. Portrait. 3 fr.

[V2B-066 | source PDF 448–448]
Éverat, printer, 16 rue du Cadran.

[Original illustration: v2-back-matter-catalogue-2.png]
Original publisher’s catalogue, second page. All advertisements are translated above.

[V2B-067 | source PDF 450–450]
New Complete Course of Nineteenth-Century Agriculture, by the members of the Institute’s agriculture section. Sixteen octavo volumes, illustrated with figures, totaling more than 8,800 pages. Price: 56 francs.

[Original illustration: v2-back-matter-rear-wrapper.png]
Original rear wrapper of Volume II, including its damage and pasted repair. The advertisement text is translated above and below.

[V2B-068 | source PDF 450–450]
6 francs per year. Review of Agriculture, Gardening, Rural and Domestic Economy, by Messrs. Noisette and Boitard.

Editorial record

The original contents prints page 381 for Chapter XII; its actual opening is page 393. The printed reference is retained here. The contents spells the cross of Migné correctly, whereas the chapter synopsis prints Migue.

The two publisher catalogue pages belong to the original copy and are separate from Robertson’s memoirs. Prices are retained as historical francs (fr.) and centimes (c.); volume formats and dated claims follow the printed advertisements.

PDF 442 is an unprinted verso; PDF 449 is an unprinted wrapper verso with reversed show-through. OCR noise on these leaves is not additional author text.

The Volume II rear wrapper is damaged, with a pasted repair obscuring part of the vertical agriculture advertisement. Its surviving text, format and price match the complete advertisement on the Volume I rear wrapper, from which the obscured words have been supplied. The two advertisements are intentionally repeated, as in the source. The damaged original image is retained without digital reconstruction.

The manual catalogue contains 147 advertised titles in its main list, followed by 16 works in press. Two entries were run together typographically and remain paired in translation. Both complete catalogue-page facsimiles are retained in addition to the English text.

Eighteenmo, duodecimo, octavo and folio translate the original bibliographical formats in-18, in-12, in-8 and in-folio. The school class names are retained rather than mapped onto present-day grade levels.