The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-11-08
CURRENT TOPICSIN PARIS How Sir Michael Herbert Was Regarded in Paris-Octave Mirbeau the Dramatst
BY PIERRE RosIER.

Paris. November sl-The word fash ton for pandering to the craze for excite ment in the society set. In this sense. ballooning is coming into fashion. It is being launched with all the prestige which money and rank can give. Santos-Du- mont, who has at least the credit of hay ing risked his life a dozen times, has shown that, for a person ready to throw away sl0000 or $20000 a year, some very pleasant jaunts can be indulged in in mid-air With a compact little airship, not much bulkier than a motor car, and not much more expensive, you can sail forth from your own piazza. pay a visit to friend ten miles distant, and, pro- vided the weather is calm, you can land again in your own house, having breathed some delightful whns of. fresh. invig- orating air.
 Comte Henri de La Vaulx has made speciality of round balloons. His trip from Paris to Kieff. in Russia, in less than forty hours is one of the feats of recent years His fast trip to Hull. in England, the other day is another record perform ance Archduke Leopold Salvador, of Austria. who crossed the Alps of the Ty rol in a balloon last year, accompanied by his wife and two eldest daughters, was one of the distinguished guests at picnic party which left the grounds of the Aeho club yesterday. Comte Henri de La Vaulx, just returned from London, was the entertainer. Among the adopts of ballooning present were M. Eiffel. the Tot. de Bourbon, one of the Spanish pretend CTS, and his sisterss the Due and Duchess d'Uzes. Prince Roland Bonaparte. etc.
 The Archduchess Leopold Salvador is the eldest of the four intrepid. romantic minded and self-wllled daughters of Don Carlos, and first cousin of the ex-crown princess of Saxony. To the age of twelve she grew up under the eye of her great uncle, the Count de Chambord, and pill grims in her childhood to Frohsdorf knew her as the Princess Blanche of Castillo her baptismal name. The archduchess is no more submissive to the gene of high rank in the matter of dress than her late mother, Dona Margareta, used to be- She seems, though such a veenturesome bal loonist quite the family woman; and no wonder Besides the two little girls who came with her and the archduke she had left six sons at home. and may look for ward to having a posterity as numerous as that of the duke of Parma
 All the Tuscan Lorraine Hapsburgs are Salvators. l have no idea in what degree the arehdueal guest of the Aero club last week is related to the royal family of England But he is strikingly like the late duke of Coburg, and his likeness to Queen Victoria as she aged is still stronger. She, however made a con tinual effort to keep her lips. closed. whereas he lets his lips, as nature in tended, always remain parted He made his first balloon ascent in Paris at the 1900 exhibition. under the pilotage of Comte de La VaulX, and he built on his return to Austria, "Le Metiorep bal loon containing 1900 metres, in which he made nineteen ascents. In one of these ascents he crossed the Hubenkopp Alps at an altitude of 400 metres. he himself pfloting. He next went over the Daes- tein Alps into Switzerland. and descended on the south side of the Lake of Con stance.
 It seems that breathing the clear, rare