The Lake Charles echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1876-1898, 1877-03-29
IN AERIAL ESCAPIpE.

, iea1uered Iarls. Inc details nave nlIner
to been but imperfectly known TO the
, public. We are fortunately enabled tc
, give them as they came, lately, from
N. Gambet.a's own lips-not, indeed, in
our hearing, but in that of several per
sons who merit o,fr entire confidence.
NJ. Gambetta WIS dining the other day
with a lady holding high position in
Partisan society. After dinner. little
warmed by the generous wines of his
hostess, and excited by compliments, the
illnstrious dictator, in compliance with a
very generous request, turned round in
his chair, and related some passages of his
curious, eventfnl life.
OF cour.e he soon had to say something
about the siege of Paris. He talked of
his dream of a 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 confided Cesar
and his fortunes to The care of the aero.
naut. Tine latter, as we shall presently
see, was so sensible of the honor that on
the strength of il he treated himself to
a remarkably good dinner as a 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, F..
have been exactly reproduced in the fol-
lowing account:
"When we started" he said, in his
purest Gascon accent, 81 had terrible .
attack of bronchitis Everybody was .
saying, If you 60 you are dead man.
The savants especially assured me that
the temperature would be ice.cold.
Luckily, l had my furs--those furs
that people have said so much about
since then--and off we went. Once
fairly clear of the earth / found it so hot
that | was glad to throw off all my wrap
pers. so much for the savants. That is
why | never cared to learn anything.
science-pooh. In FIVE or six hours the
balloon stopped. shook the aelonaut,
who had fallen asleep. Where are we q
over the Disc, he replied, ".just on the
boundary of the department of the
Somme and Disc Are you sure? 'Oh,
Monsieur, / know the country as well as
know my own pocket. And in fact,
after looking at my map, and then at
the landscape, found we were above
the Disc, or at least, above q river. 1t
was the OIse, or something else
let it be the Disc. The point
was to know whe ther we were still
over the Prussian line or among our own .
people. Well, just then, directly under
The car, saw building, sort of farm,
With large square courtyard in which
number of men were lying down with .
heir piled arms in their midst. WHO 9
ne they" ooh! Monsieur says he, ,
for certain they are Gardes Mobiles; we q
re in the French lines The devil we
re, said /; sbut are you sure of il? p q
'ecause, for my part, you know i can't '
ecognize the uniforms Perfectly h
ure.' Down we 60 then, and down a
re went, till we were not more than n
even or eight hundred metres from the q
arth, when we hearda German challenge
Wer da? and saw mighty hustle in n
ne court-yard-the men jumping up, d
sizing their arms and beginning to sheet 0
the balloon. And the aeronaut had a
tipped the grappler! He was drunk. / a
ad just time to whip out my knife. cut tt
ne cord and pitch him to the bottom v
the car-with threat that, if he O.
Tired, I'd throw him over Then we "
cyan to mount again, but slowly enough, ii
it seemed to me, but we could hear 81
he music of the bullets, though at the d
lstance they could not have done us fe
uch harm. l verify believe that if we f
ad leaned over we might have caught b
lem in our hands. In fact, i know we t.
'uld, for afterwards made the expert b.
ent at Tours, by setting some cl
lasseurs to fire On captive balloon N
Sed at about the same height. The
Ills had no appreciable eff il
ct. After awhile the balloon nj
opped, then began to descend once T
ore, with the Prussians still watching cs