The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 5, 1896, Page 25

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1896. MURDERED FOR STAMPS Strange Crimes Committed for Philatelic Gems ysterious Ending of an Aged French Gollector _partly open, showing several pieces of gold coin and a diamond-studded watch. This showed the motive could not have been robbery. Nor could the police find that the man had a single enemy, ‘When the fact of the murder became known to the public one of the first per- sons to hurry to the house was Hector Giroux. He admitted readily enough that he had called on the dead man the night before and found him in perfect health. The best detectives in Paris were put on the case. It was one of these, a week after the murder, who found a possible motive for the murder. Iulooking over the index in the album containing the collection of stamps all were accounted for but one. That was a Hawaiian two-cent stamp of the 1852 issue, known as the missionary stamps. At that time this stamp was quoted at $2000. The detective searched every shop in the city where such a stamp would be likely to be sold. Finally suspicion fell on Giroux, when yit was found that he, too, was an enthu- SUICIDE AND ROBBERY A San Franciscan Who Took Carbolic Acid After a Vain Search for Rarities Nature abhors extremes no less than she does a vacuum. Wheré there is excessive predilection for any particular thing that object draws to it dangers that tend in a measure at least to make its enjoyment siastic philatelist. Through the ordinary channels the detective secured an intro- duction to this man under the guise of a stamp collector. For months he watched and waited, becoming in time the close friend ana companion of Giroux. One night the newly made friend of Giroux turned the conversation on the subject of Hawaiian stamps and the missionary stamps in particular. Of these there are but three denominations—2 cent, 5 cent and 13 cent, the rarest being the 2 cent. In a burst of enthusiasm Giroux exhibited one of the 2-cent denomination. He was arrested the next day for the Leroux murder, after the proof had Leen obtained that there was only one speci- men of the stamp mentioned in Paris. less of unalloyed pleasure, This law has had a remarkable exempli- fication in the matter of philately, or stamp-collecting. While it was a mere schoolboy’s pastime it attracted the at- tention of none but those who found inno- cent pleasure in the accumulation of la- bels used to prepay postage, but since it has become the diversion of professional and business men and persons of affairs these little bits of paper have takenon a value that has tempted to crime and tragedy. To fully appreciate the incentive that sometimes exists to drive to robbery, in- sanity, murder, and even suicide, it must be known that certain stamps are of such great rarity that they command what to the uninitiate seem fabulous prices, and some are without price, as their owners are men of great wealth who could not be in- auced to part with their philatelic gems under any money temptation. On the other hand there are enthusiastic collectors who do not hesitate to sacrifice their own personal comforts to the procuration of some much coveted rarity, and others again who, lacking proper moral poise, would not be deterred by crime to obtain the object of their almost insane desire. In some cases disappointed philatelic hopes have led to insanity, and in one in- stance in this City has led to suicide. During the past month philatelists all over the world have been stirred up over the murder committed in Paris, which had the possession of a valuable collection of stamps for its object. More or less mystery surrounds the tragedy. Julien Emile Delahaeff, just tarned 23, one of the many small Parisian dealers who may be seen every Tuesday and Sun- day traflicking in stamps at the open-air bourse on the Champs Elysees, was the victim. Delahaeff was a consumptive and un- able to do any manual labor. About three years ago he entered the ranks of the dealers in stamps and soon established a lucrative trade. On April 11 young Delahaeff received a visit from & man who said he lived in the Rue de Turenne, and between whom and the deceased there had been some previous transactions in stamps. From this per- son Delahaeff bought a stamp collection for $400. The day following a letter came to the young dealer asking him to meet the writer, who signed himself Darcis, at ihe Cafe des Negociants, near the Louvre, for the purpose of transacting stamp business. Delahaeff became a little suspicious, but he resolved to go to the rendezvous. He took with him, however, as 8 precaution, a younger brother. On arriving at the Cafe des Negociants they looked in vain for anybody of the description given, and returned home believing they had been made victims of a stupid practical joke. Next morning, however, another letter came from Darcis. In this communica- tion the young man was asked to lunch with his mysterious correspondent in the Hotel de la Girond, Rue Jean Jacques lousseau, He was also requested to take with him the stamp collection he had re- cently purchased. Delahaeff kept the ap- pointment, saw Darcis, lunched with him, and, according to his own account when be returned home, agreed to sell to his peculiar acquaintance for $800 the collec- tion he had bought for $400. No money was paid down nor did the collection change hands. Delahaeff’s father and his friends cautioned him to be careful, but he said he had every confidence in the man, The next day Delahaeff received a postal card, and complying with the re- quest it contained went to 61 Avenue de Versailles. That was the last seen of him by relatives and friends. His father's anxiety was somewhat relieved by the receipt of a postal card stating Emile had gone to visit some friends at Varenne Saint Hilaire. A few days later he re- ceived a letter from a stranger informing him that his son was about to start for America, having sold his stamp collec- tion for $920. This thoroughly alarmed the father, who at once communicated with the Pre- fecture of Police. Detectives, acting with all the swiftness and sagacity of their pro- totypes in French fiction, arrested Joseph Aubert and a female accomplice on a charge of having willfully murdered th missing philatelist. V Paris was the scene of even a more startling tragedy than this about four years ago, and for which the inciting cause was the overwhelming desire to possess a single philatelic gem of the first water. It was enacted early in June, 1892, 1n the Rue de Poisson, when Gaston Leroux, a philatelist, well known in the city, was found dead in his apartments, with a great gash in his throat through which his life had flowed away. It was a critae that long puzzled the authorities. Leroux lived alone, was wealthy, had few callers and, as far as any one knew, interested himself in nothing except the collecting of stamps. For many years an old woman had been accustomed to look after his rooms every morning. On that June morning when she reached the apart- ments she went in by a rear door, as was ner habit, and began to dust. It was not until she had furbished up two rooms and reached the third that she came upon the body of the murdered man and fled with acry of terror. The police were puzzled by the crime from the start. There seemed no motive. Although there was a large amount of money in the rooms none seemed 1o have been taken. In & desk close beside where the body lay there was a small drawer The evidence was circumstantial, but Giroux was a novice in crime, and con- fessed that he had killed his friend after he had refused to sell- him the Hawaiian stamp, which he needed to complete the set of the issue to which it belonged. Not less strange was the death of Arthur Tilden o7 this City several years ago, after a vain search for a 10ent Baltimore stamp, an oblong label of most homely design, but extremely rare, issued by the Postmaster of the Maryland town. He swallowed a quantity of carbolic acid, and his friends felt sure that he ended his life during a period of insanity, brought on by his philatelic mania. For months he had been interested in no other topic than that of the stamp he had set his mind and heart upon obtain- ing. Two days after he was buried his diary was found, showing entries for each day for a month before his death, proving beyond a doubt that he had long contem- plated suicide, but had put it off trom day to day, in hopes of finding a copy of the rara avis. At the close of most of the en- tries there appeared the line: “To-mor- row I may find it.” Two months ago the rarest variety of this particular stamp was brought to light in the East and was sold to its present owner for $4400, the highest price by $1900 ever paid for a single stamp. Another stamp which may bave led to murder, although the police are not quite sure of it, even though murder was done, was a Brattleboro, a copy of which was sold in New York recently for §650. Dun- can Teasdale, who was stopping at an up- town hotel when he bought the stamp at a public sale, soon lett the city. In London, in Berlin and a half dozenof the larger European cities Teasdale complained to tne police that he was being dogged from city to city by 8 man who wanted to gain possession of a stamp which he carried. The man was believed to be insane. Three monthsaiter he left New York Teasdale was found murdered not far from Madrid, in Spain. His valuable stamp was found sewed in the lining of his vest. One of life s Tragedies The house was being cleaned out after mov- ing and two old shoes were thrown together into the ash barrel. One was a meat black shoe with buttons and the other was a dilapi- dated tan tie. ““Oh,” eaid the black shoe, softly, “I am so glad to get near some one to talk to. I've been packed away in that dark box so long I've al- most forgotten how tne world looks, You look to be about my size. Whose shoe are you?” The tan shoe answered with the nome of its owner. Itwas a pretty, girlish name, not fit- ting the disreputable shoe at all. “Oh, were you hers?”’ said the black shoe, joyfully, “then you can tell me about her, for Iwaes hers, too. She was 20 when she packed me away. How old is she now?” “Twenty-five,” said the tan shoe, looking curiously at her neat companion. “Then she must be even more lovely,” went on the black shoe. “How Ishould like to see her again. I have thought that soon she would pack away some tiny shoes with me and I would know she was happy.” “She is dead,” said the tan shoe, “dead and buried. I was the last she wore.” “Dead! Oh, the pity of it! 8o young, so good, 0 beautiful!” “What are you saying?”’ cried the tan shoe in amazement; ‘‘do you eall her good? The world called her badyand those who stood around her coffin whispered that it was well her life ‘was ended.” ‘“Why, her life was one of love and gentle- ness and quiet charity. Many an errand of mercy I have trod with her, and she never took a step that was not of purity and good- ness. That was only five years ago. Burely, we did not belong to the same person.” “Yes,’” said the tan shoe, *“I think we did. My owner was not good, and together we have been in many places of wickedness; but I have seen traces of your owner in her face some- times as she sat looking at the floor in the solitude before she slept. I have wondered what her face was before it became hard and lined with sin. Tell me the last you remember of her.” I remember well,” said the tan shoe, sadly. ‘“‘the last day when she put me awey. She had been out with her lover and she came home so bright and happy, and when she saw me lying on the floor with my mate, she took us up and said, ‘T'il put these shoes away until he comes back; they were the ones I wore when I saw him first, and they shall be the ones I wear when I go to my new home,’ and she back us under the clothes in & box, me in one corner and my mate inthe other. It was dark and silent there, for I could not see or hear my mate, and she never came to take us outr. 1 thought she forgot her pretty little faney in Berav s 0,” spoke the tan shoe, “she had no joy; her lover never came back. Isee it all now.” “But did people call her all bad?” asked the pitying black shoe. “‘Did they not remember the twenty years of gentle goodness to set against the five of sin? You belonged to a sin- ful woman, but did I not belong to a righteous said the tan shoe, “to the world she is sinful woman. Did you not learn while you walked the earth that people are judged by the last shoes they wear?’ y “The world is unjust and cruel, but tell does the other world where mortals go jus the same way? Are they judged in heaven by the last shoes they wear?” “That I do not know,” replied the tan shoe, “but as I sat behind the door I hear the minis- ter say of her that she hed gone before One who saw deeper than mortal eye could go. Maybe you and the other shoes of her innocent days may avail her there.” The black shoe sighed and murmured as the ashman shouldered the barrel, “I have mourned because 1 was not a mortal with loves and hopes and immortality, but to-day I am glad to be an old shoe with oblivion be- fore me.” O.E. H. The Old Salon and the New }\mericafi Art Students Who Have Distinguished Themselves Pbroad---John Sargent's Portrait PARIS, June 17.—There has already been much disquietude expressed by French papers over the progress made by foreign artists. The exhibitions of this year certainly emphasize the impression. The American school abroad distinguishes itself by more than one remarkable can- vas. In the Champ de Mars—that is to say a good deal—in the Champs Elysees it would mean much less—there is a dreary | excellence that hovers over the Old Salon, & contentment with existing conditions that threatens the future of French art almost as much as the ultra modernity of the Champ de Mars. Three years ago the Rosicrucians were almost too modern for the new salon. Now it is not at all astonishing toen- counter them in the old. Three yearsisa lifetinre for a nineteenth century fad. Paris accepts every new departure with re- spect. The Rosicrucians attracted much young talent by their mysticism and, to be frank, their remarkable capacity for adver- tising their own methods and aims. They called themselves magicians and esthetes. They did not have a catalogue but called it “Geste esthetique,” and they took for their motto *“Non nobis Domine, sed nominis tui glorie soli. Amen.” They were mnot only mystics, but they considered themselves medieval Cath- olics, took the Gothic rose as their symbol and called themselves banners they had dared to lift, and it was a deed of aamirable courage in this age of negation, of scorn'for sentiment, of wor- ship of the absolute and the real. They held that the Fra Angelico angels had ac- complished more good than all the anni- hilating researches of Renan. If in their pictures they allowed their imaginations to run riot, especially in the questions of mournful and mysterious symbolical figures, rising out of mists of paint, with faces in which startling eyes shone from hollows under pale hair, and no other features were distinguishable — all this tendency to exaggeration has become the hobby-horse of a few, and except as an in- fluence the Rosicrucian fever is a thing of the past. This is only one instance of the many in which the most artistic nation of the world runs afield; her painters run now in so many directions that the plodding and sober Scot, the hard-working Flemish and Dutch painter, the keen ana eager American are driving them from their own ground. At the head of the Anglo-American school is Mr. John Bargent, who shows but one portrait, that of Mr. Grabam Robertson. His Joose and flowing brush makes of the pale and delicate head of the young English painter an admirable example of his power to model a solid head almost without crouching on a bed, by Sargeant Kendall, which also recalls the Luxembourg in that remarkable unfinished work of Manet's called “Olympia.” Humphrey Jonnston’s pertrait of his mother is a very successful and original piece of work. The gently severe figure on the green sofa against the simple brown background, with the faded gray of the skin of hands and face—how charmingly conceived and rendered! Miss Cecilia Beaux exhibits for the first time in France. There is hardly another American woman who could paint as strong a portrait as that of Dr. Grier; the pose is simple and effective, and the cifference between the textures of the cos- tume and the absolute difference in the texture of the skin drawn over the fore- head, the looser flesh under the cheek- bones and the smooth surface of the hands are very well observed. Mr. Boldini is astonishing, as usual. His portrait of the “‘Princesse P.” is a woman in gray brocaded satin, sharply outlinea against a darker background. His crisp, black notes, the hair, the shad- ows, the edge of the profile, artificial as they may be, add the interest that is com- vleted by his remarkable way of posing the model. Mr. Bony has a large somber study, entitled “La Bible.” There is a vague suggestion of a woman, but we judge it as Mr. Lavery is a canny Scot, and so very, very canny in his portrait of Miss Mary B. The usual white satin is a revelation of pearly shimmering air. The ribbons, the vase, the roses, all are forgotten when looking at this remarkable woman, with features as strong as those of a man and a high and serious dignity. If it suggests Whistler it suggests Watts no less, and certainly Lavery more than either. Edward Arthar Walton and James Guthrie are two men of the Scotch school who contest with Lavery the laurel of greatest excellence. Walton has a land- scape, powerful and grave. It is not quite fair to think instantly of Constable in looking at it, any more than of Mesdag and Israels; but there 13 a community of spirit between them all. It is rather hard to think immediately of Manet’s wonder- ful woman in pink, with the green parrot tbat drives the Philistine almost insane, when confronted by Mr. Walton's tall ‘woman in yellows and browns. Mr. Guthrie, who 1s the son of a Scotch minister, is perhaps the most versatile. ‘Whether he chooses to paint a young girl under the soft light of a lamp, or a monu- mental portrait of 8 man on horseback, whether he uses the gay freshuess of pastel toexpress his quick impressions of life in the streets of a city or a village, whether he paints landscape or marines, he uses a broad and vigorous brush Franz Hals himself might have approved of. His three portraits, all male, one of Sir Edwin Dawes and two of two young boys, have something absolutely simple and large in their effective ana sober handling. Anders Zom has a portrait of himseli— too clever and ultra modern. Thereisa nude model in the background looking out from under Ler ha'r; the side of the figure is washed out in that flowing use of paint Zom uses with much effect. Itisa big sketch and an interesting sketch—but it remains a sketch—and not a representa- tive one from so good a painter. Agashe, Binet, Miss Nourse, Gros—how many painters show much reasonably good work! There are twenty Japanese landscapes by Louis Dumoulin which actually reek of Japan. The day has long gone by since the artist painted his impressions of a country from traditions in a comlortable studio at home. All these laughing, chat- tering women, smooth-haired and dark, with their shaking fans ana soft silken costumes, the movement in the light streets, the people who pass and meet and pass again—how it all vibrates with light PORTRAIT OF GRAHAM ROBERTSON, BY JOHN SARGENT. Rosicrucians. They were not only paint- ers, but held that music was a large part of art, that music held color. At mid- nieht they addressed the spirits that de- scend over the all-genial artists with weird music. In order to shaw their religious sincerity, they ordered a mass on their opening day—Notre Dame was the chosen church, and the music from the evening meal in “Parsifal” rolled in rich solemnity from the great organ. When the last note had melted away, they drew the roses from their buttonholes (they had assumed on varnishing day), placed them on the hilts of small daggers and made with them the sign of the cruss, to the gaping astonishment of the bewildered workmen and small shopkeepers, who had come as usual to attend early mass. The result was that the picture-dealers, Durand- Ruel, in spite of an exorbitant price of admission, received 11,000 visitors on the opening day alone. The greatest of the magicians did the honors. He was called Bar Peladan. He wore a costume of black satin: around his pale head fell a shower of coal-black hair, which with his flowing black beard made a figure memorable and fantastic enough to create much diversion among the less awestruck of the crowd. Under all this absurdity there was and remained an influence for good. This cuit, with mysticism as the hidden god- dess, was the first rebellion against the realists. Romance and idealism were the the aid of shadow. Mr. Robertson has been painted against a dark screen. The indefinite wall beyond ana the edge of acanvas give the impression of distance within the frame that makes Mr. Sargent’s figures so astonishingly alive. They have walked into the frame, they can come for« ward or retreat within it without seriously injuring themselves by violent contact with a painted wall, to which they have apparently been pasted. It seems remark- ably simple the placing of a figure within a frame, but it is in reality the most subtle and the most delicate art. Notice in this portrait the hand in light; the long and slender hand, that is solid— solid flesh painted against the overlong coat, which would be so easy to ridicule if it were not worn and painted with so much distinction. Even the touch of paie yet luminous color on the head of the stick the young man holds is something to regard with respect. It carries the light and the interest into the shadow. There are a dozen paintings which would attract attention if they were not so pain- fully reminiscent. William Dannat’s clever portrait of the dancer Otero recalls that rich and glowing canvas of Carmen- cita, with her insolent Spanish head dis- dainfully raised and the golden satin of her skirt filling the small room in the gal- lery of the Luxembourg like a light under an amber globe. There is a nude fienre of a woman scientists construct a prehistoric animal from a jawbone. Literally there is noth- ing visible but the chin of the woman, her two hands and the book she holds. One of the pleasantest portraits in the new salon is that painted by Gandara. It hangs 1n the dimly lit room in which the “Last Supper,” by Dagnau Bouveret, is to be seen. It is a conventional but very delicate portrait of a young girl in white satin, but for once the satin is subordi- nated to the fresh and sparkling head of the girl herself, The modern garments are calculated to overbalance any but the strongest personal Mr. Latouche has a landscape that seems to give forth light as well as to re- ceive it. 1t is truly Venetian in concep- tion and execution. What a blaze of color in the yellow sails and golden reflections! ‘What spirit in these gay and vivid Italian heads? What variety of treatment in the wreathed boats thst float down the water that is so oily, so luminous, that shakes and sparkles ana glitters and gleams with such astonishing brilliance! Miss Mathewes has a very clever and a very hideous portrait of a woman in a morning-wrapper. F. D. Marsh has a “Fantaisie” like a Dannat; six Spanish women doing nothing at all, against a very blue background. All the six women have strange blue shadows on their faces and look slightly decom- posed, making rather an uncanny picture. and life, and the charming gayety Pierre Loti and others have written of! There are pastels galore and there is sculp- ture—there is a head of Verlaine, like the head of a satyr, big, broad, ugly, sad and wise, truthful as truth, most probably, and as unreservedly brutal. The drawings of Paul Renouard have the instantaneous quality of a kodak—and such strength of humor. His view of the English people is as characteristically French as the late drawings of English life by Charles Dana Gibson have been characveristically Ameri- can. With that generosity that fills us with renewed respect we observe that an entire room has been fitted out with the draw- ings of Edwin Abbey, prince of penmen. Here we have Olivia and Ophelia, Hermi- one and Viola, Falstaff and King Hal, Rosalind and Audrey and Touchstone—a triumphal procession; never did the hum- ble medium of pen and ink work greater wonders, lines as fine as spun silk, & spi- der-web network of shadow, and then the quick, sharp stroke of an instrument that has grown suddenly as hard and as as- sured as the steel point in the hand of an etcher. And all this while I have said nothing of the old salon—perhaps the less said the better! VAN Dyck BRowN. Some of Life's Comedies “De Vere is a tho rough aristocrat, isn’t “Yes, ne has such a well-bred way, of not listening when you say anything to him.” Smith—I hear that your mother-in-law is dangerously ill. Captain Spurrs—She is rather seedy, but she is not as dangerous as when she was well. A genius is a man who, when he accidentally seys & good thing, can make his hearers believe it was intentional. Daly says: *“A friend of mine seems to have all the luck in the world. A few months ago he worked in & box. factory for $10 a week. One day he put his fingers where they had no business and got two of them cut off. Now he bas got & job in the Mills building at $25a week as a shorthand writer.” One swallow doesn’t make a summer, par- ticnlarly if the cat sees him first and makes a spring. Friend—And are you now ott of danger? Convalescent—No, the doctor says he will pay me two or three more visits. “Isn’t that a very slow horse of yours?” “Well, he isn’'t much for speed, but he’s easily frightened and runs away & good deal, 80 he gets there just the same.” R. G. Knowles says: “Iknew anIrishman by the name of Casey who was foreman of a jury which had to try a Jew for murder. Word ‘was sent to Casey that he would be paid £200 if he got the jury toreturn a verdict of man- slaughter. This he succeeded in doing, the prisoner only getting & long term of imprison- ment. When the Jew’s friends had paid him the money one of them asked him if he had much trouble in getting the verdict. “Faith an’ I had an awful struggle,” said Casey; ‘“the rest of the jury wanted to let him off allo- gether.” Storekeeper—Gold rings? Yes sir, step this ‘way please. Eighteen carats? Mulvaney—No sor, Oi've been aitin onions if ut’s anny oy yure bizness. ‘The man who keeps his mouth snut never has to eat humble pie. May—Just imagine, Alice! I have recelved two proposals of marriage. Alice—Which have you rejected " May—Rejected? Neither of them. One I accepted and the other I put in reserve. A frog makes a spring; & swallow makesa summer. A venerable pile—The old carpet in the editor’s sanctum. The man who has “mutton-chop” whiskers peed never starve. The song-writer who can compose & song without the word ‘‘Oh!” and the reporter who only uses the word ‘‘exercises” oncé a year have not yet been found. The following is a P. 8. to a letter from a cook: “Please exkuse bad writin’ and spellin’ as mi feet is awful sore.” “What's your beby’s name, Mrs. Coggins?"” “Well, you see, Miss, he’s the eighth, so we have called him the Octopus!” “I hear you extract teeth without pain.” “Quite trne, madam; in all thewoperations I have performed, 1 never felt theslightest pain. “How shall I have my boanet trimmed to match my complexion, Alice?” “}I you want it to match your face, have it plain.”” “I once knew & man,” said the imaginative boarder, “who was so fat that he was actually taller lying down than when he was standing up. What do you think of that?’ “It strikes me,"” said the cheerful idiot, “as pretty tall lying.”—Indianapolis Journal. |FELL FROM THE GLOUDS The Thrilling Experience of a French Artist Thought He Was Go- ing to a Gertain Doom EXCITING BALLOON TRIP The Glouds Hung Like Golossal Stalactites, or Like a Vast Forest of Inverted Trees There 18 a man in Paris who knows how it feels to fall more than a mile through the air. He is Fernando Mirande, anartist and sculptor. Mr. Miranda went upina balloon that collapsed. He luckily es- caped with his life. The balloon ascent in which Mr. Miranda took part was made by a party of French scientists from Paris. Mr. Miranda tells something of his own sensations in the New York World in the followine language: When I accepted an invitation to be the artist of M. Wilfrid de Fonvielle’s party in the William Tell I little thonght L was being invited to fall over 6000 feet. But neither did M. de Fomvielle. It was to me only an unexpected opportunity to make a balloon ascension under the most favorable auspices and in the very balloon that carried Gambetta out of Paris during the siege 1n 1871. To him it was common- place. Besides Captain de Fonvielle and his assistant aeronaut, M. Chavautier, there was & M. Bernard, inventor of a new device for measuring the speed of ascert and descent, and myself. Our purpose was to take certain scientific observations and conduct some experiments in electric conditions at various altitudes. The ascent was made on a beautiful May forenoon at La Villette. M. de Fouvielle had formally nvited the special Embassa- dor of Annam, with his suite, who wereat that time at the French capital on a diplo- matic mission. They attended in their bright national costumes and centributed a picturesque effect to the occasion. ‘When all was ready the loud, stern voice of Captain de Fonvielle cried *“All on board?” Then I jumped into the willow basket, trying to forget in that moment all my connections on earth. Asevery- thing was in order the captain’s voice was again heard with the word ‘‘Lachez,” or “Let it go,” and the balloon was free. The monster balloon sailed majestically up. The silence around us grew abso- lute. The place we left and our friends became ever smaller, and the sweep of our vision enlarged proportionately. Shortly, in death-like silence, we reached the lower ends of the clouds at the height of 4500 feet above the deita formed by the conjunction of the rivers Seine and Marne. These floating masses of imposing grandeur were separated and inde- pendent, but moving in the same direc- tion, sometimes separating more or less and sometimes closing up and uniting themselves as immense chips of a vast block. This formation impressed me becuuse we are accustomed to see the clouds from below, and in consequence we only see the end behind which is hiding the whole length of the cloud. To explain more cleariy, the cloud is like a long stick, the length of which, when pointed at us, we cannot see. As we were ascending between those gigantic chimneys of vapor and approach- ing their tops, it was interesting to ob- serve how the vapor became thicker. Soon we reached the general level on which they were swimming. This was at the height of 9000 feet, or as high again as when we entered their lower ends, which would show that the vapory stalactites were 4500 feet long. The sky was of a deep blue, the air was pure and sharp and the sun burned more than usual. Enormous dark openings, like tremendcus abysses below, were often seen on this vast field, produced by the disintegration of the clouds or masses of them in their course of floating. Almost immediately I feit in my ears a kind of persistent little pain, and I inci- dentally remarked it to M. de Fonvielle, He said that he could not venture to go higher without risk, as that was a sign of extreme rarefication of tke atmosphere, and with that view he opened the valve and we commenced our descent. ‘While in the fog on the descentI hape vened to notice that the screw of M. Ber- nard’s device was rotating so fast that I thought that it was out of order. I called the attention of the inventor and Captain de Fonvielle to it. The captain ordered us at once to throw out *ballast, and we emptied several sandbags, but the flying sand went up and fell again upon us and inside of our willow basket. We threw out some cigarette papers, and up they went like lightning. Ithought that we were lost, and as I was looking below and observing the hills and the other objects growing rapidly larger I had a queer, sickly feeling. I felt I was going to certain death, and was sur- prised at my own calmness. Fonvieile was equal to the emergency, and with perfect coolness ordered all the ballast we had thrown out, bags, instru. ments and all, and us to at once climb up and suspend ourselves from the hoop of the balloon. ‘We managed to keep hanging from our hoop till after Captain de Fonvielle threw the anchor, which, fortunately, did not take long to catch. The couniry people who bad seen us fall came to our assiste ance. The rope was pulled by them until the palloon was drawn down so that we could jump out, but in the strong wind the bal- loon was plunging like an imprisoned bull, and the process of landing was not at all comfortable. At last we succeeded in get~ ting upon the solid earth, and I am sure that I was not the last to leave the basket. We were all sound, except for a few bruises, and we held a consultation on the probable cause of ourfall. It appeared that we had neglected the rope which goes through the balloon for the purpose of opening the valve, and that it had become entangled with the other ropes of the basket. Thankful to have escaped we took the train back to Paris, leaving M. Chavautier in charge of the balloon.