It needed not this last account to spur me on to visit him. I only doubted
whether or not I should endeavour to see Idris again, before I departed.
This doubt was decided on the following day. Early in the morning Raymond
came to me; intelligence had arrived that Adrian was dangerously ill, and
it appeared impossible that his failing strength should surmount the
disorder. "To-morrow," said Raymond, "his mother and sister set out for
Scotland to see him once again."

"And I go to-day," I cried; "this very hour I will engage a sailing
balloon; I shall be there in forty-eight hours at furthest, perhaps in
less, if the wind is fair. Farewell, Raymond; be happy in having chosen the
better part in life. This turn of fortune revives me. I feared madness, not
sickness--I have a presentiment that Adrian will not die; perhaps this
illness is a crisis, and he may recover."

Everything favoured my journey. The balloon rose about half a mile from the
earth, and with a favourable wind it hurried through the air, its feathered
vans cleaving the unopposing atmosphere. Notwithstanding the melancholy
object of my journey, my spirits were exhilarated by reviving hope, by the
swift motion of the airy pinnace, and the balmy visitation of the sunny
air. The pilot hardly moved the plumed steerage, and the slender mechanism
of the wings, wide unfurled, gave forth a murmuring noise, soothing to the
sense. Plain and hill, stream and corn-field, were discernible below, while
we unimpeded sped on swift and secure, as a wild swan in his spring-tide
flight. The machine obeyed the slightest motion of the helm; and, the wind
blowing steadily, there was no let or obstacle to our course. Such was the
power of man over the elements; a power long sought, and lately won; yet
foretold in by-gone time by the prince of poets, whose verses I quoted much
to the astonishment of my pilot, when I told him how many hundred years ago
they had been written:--