the two travelers were transported across the Gulf of Friedland in three-
quarters of an hour, and descended at Krasnoe-selo, twenty-five versts
from St. Petersburg. The fourth trial took place at Moscow, and Garnerin
ascended more than four thousand toises [24,000 ft.] He had many
harrowing experiences, and at the end of seven hours descended three
hundred and thirty versts [200 miles] from Moscow, in the neighborhood of
the old frontiers of Russia. This same balloon was again used at the
ascension which Madame Garnerin made at Moscow with Madame Toucheninolf,
in the midst of a frightful storm, and amid flashes of lightning which
killed three men within three hundred paces of the balloon, at the very
instant of the ascension. These ladies descended without accident
twenty-one versts from Moscow.

The city of Paris gave a gratuity of six hundred francs to the boatmen
who had drawn out of Lake Bracciano the balloon, which was brought back
to Paris, and placed in the museum of the Hotel de Ville.

I was a witness that same day of the kindness with which the Emperor
received the petition of a poor woman, a notary's wife, I believe, whose
husband had been condemned on account of some crime, I know not what, to
a long imprisonment. As the carriage of their Imperial Majesties passed
before the Palais-Royal, two women, one already old, the other sixteen or
seventeen years of age, sprang to the door, crying, "Pardon for my
husband, pardon for my father."

The Emperor immediately, in a loud tone, gave the order to stop his
carriage, and held out his hand for the petition which the older of the
two women would give to no one but him, at the same time consoling her
with kind words, and showing a most touching interest lest she might be
hurt by the horses of the marshals of the empire, who were on each side