aeronautics which became the ruling passion of his life.

After the war was over he returned to Germany, only to find
another war awaiting him--the Austro-Prussian campaign. Later on
he took part in the Franco-Prussian War, and in both campaigns he
emerged unscathed.

But his heart was not in the profession of soldiering. He had
the restless mind of the inventor, and when he retired, a
general, after twenty years' military service, he was free to
give his whole attention to his dreams of aerial navigation. His
greatest ambition was to make his country pre-eminent in aerial
greatness.

Friends to whom he revealed his inmost thoughts laughed at him
behind his back, and considered that he was "a little bit wrong
in his head". Certainly his ideas of a huge aerial fleet
appeared most extravagant, for it must be remembered that the
motor-engine had not then arrived, and there appeared no
reasonable prospect of its invention.

Perseverance, however, was the dominant feature of Count
Zeppelin's character; he refused to be beaten. His difficulties
were formidable. In the first place, he had to master the whole
science of aeronautics, which implies some knowledge of
mechanics, meteorology, and electricity. This in itself was no
small task for a man of over fifty years of age, for it was not
until Count Zeppelin had retired from the army that he began to
study these subjects at all deeply.