Richland beacon., 1877-03-17
An AERIAL ESCAPlDE.

leaguereQ iarlS. Inc Oet3lls nave miner
to been but imperfectly known to the
public. We are fortunately enabled to
give them as they came. lately, from
NJ. Gambet:a's own lips-not, indeed, il
our hearing, but in that of several per
sons who merit or entire confidence.
NJ. Gambe,ta WIS dining the other day
with a lady holding high position in
Partisan society. After dinner. little
warmed by the generous wines Of hi:
hostess. and excited by compliments, the
illnstrious dictator, in compliance with 8
very generous request, turned round in
his chair, and related some passages of hi:
curious, eventfnl life.
Ofcour,e he soon had to say something
about the siege Of Paris. He talked Of
his dream of prolonged resistance, and
went on to show how he came to make
up his mind to leave the city by bal.
loon. At length all was ready for his
flight through the air; he bought furs,
took with him the inseparable Spueller,
jumped into the car and confded Caesar
and his fortunes to The care of the aero.
naut. The latter, az We shall presently
see, was so sensible of the honor that on
the strength of it he treated himself to
remarkably good dinner as prepare
ton for the journey.
And now we had better let the hero of
the adventure relate it in his own words,
which as we may again assure our readers,
have been exactly reproduced in the fol-
lowing account:
"When we started" he said, in his
purest Gascon accent, az had a terrible
attack of bronchitis. Everybody was
saying, IF you go you are a dead man.
The savants especially assured me that
the temperature would be ice.cold.
Luckily, 1 had my furs--those furs
that people have said so much about
since then--and of we went. Once
fairly clear of the earth found it so hot
that 1 was glad to throw off all my wrap
pers. So much for the savants. That is
why 1 never cared to learn anything.
Sc;ence-pooh. In five or six hours the
balloon stopped. 1 shook the aeronaut,
who had fallen asleep. Where are we p
Over the Oise,' he replied, "just ON the
boundary Of the department of the
Somme and Disc Are you sureY 'Oh,
Monsieur, l know the country as we'll as
I know my own pocket And in fact,
after lookingat my map, and then at
the landscape, found We were above
the Disc, or at least, above a river. It
was the Disc. or something else
let it be the Disc. The point
was to know whether we were still
over the Prussian line or among our own
people. Well, just then, directly under
the car, 1 saw building, a sort of farm,
with large square courtyard in which
q number of men were lying down with
their piled arms in their midst. who
are they? oh! Monsieur says he,
for certain they are Gardes Mobiles; we
are in the French lines The devil we
are said 1; 'but are you sure of it?-
because, for my part, you know l can't
recognize the uniforms Perfectly
sure Down we 60 then,' and down
we went, till we were not more than
seven or eight hundred metres from the
earth, when we heard German challenge,
'Wer dap and saw a mighty hustle In
the court-yard-the men jumping up,
selling their arms and beginning to sheet
at the balloon. And the aeronaut had
slipped the grappIer! He was drunk. l
had just time to whip out my knife. cut
the cord and pitch him to the bottom
of the car-with a threat that, if he
stirred, I'd throw him over. Then we
began to mount again, but slowly enough,
as it seemed to me, but we could hear
the music of the bullets, though at the
distance they could not have done us
much harm. l verify believe that if we
had leaned over We might have caught
them in our hands. In fact, know we
could, for l afterwards made the expert
ment at Tours, by setting some
chasseurs to fire on a captive balloon
fixed at about the same height. The
balls had no appreciate eff.
feet. After awhile the balloon
stopped, then began to descend once
mora with the Prusaians still watchinn