A man, whom I liked very much, was engaged in certain inventions for balloons. To find out how to steer balloons means, for me, finding out how to realize my dream, namely, to fly in the air, to approach the sky, and have under one’s feet the moist downlike clouds. Ah, how interested I was in my friend’s researches! One day, though, he came to me very much excited with a new discovery.
“I have discovered something about which I am wild with delight!” he said. He then began to explain to me that his balloon would be able to carry inflammable matter without the least danger, thanks to this, and thanks to that.
“But what for?” I asked, bewildered by his explanations and half crazy with so many technical words.
“What for?” he repeated; “why, for war!” he replied. “We shall be able to fire, and to throw terrible bombs to a distance of a thousand, twelve hundred, and even fifteen hundred yards, and it would be impossible for us to be harmed at such a distance. My balloon, thanks to a substance which is my invention, with which the covering would be coated, would have nothing to fear from fire nor yet from gas.”
“I do not want to know anything more about you or your invention,” I said, interrupting him brusquely. “I thought you were a humane savant, and you are a wild beast. Your researches were in connection with the most beautiful manifestation of human genius, with those fêtes of the skies which I loved so dearly. You want to transform these now into cowardly attacks turned against the earth. You horrify me! Do go!”
With this I left my friend to himself and his cruel invention, ashamed for a moment. His efforts have not succeeded, though, according to his wishes.
The remains of the poor lad were put into a small coffin, and Mme. Guérard and I followed the pauper’s hearse to the grave. The morning was so cold that the driver had to stop and take a glass of hot wine, as otherwise he might have died of congestion. We were alone in the carriage, for the boy had been brought up by his grandmother who could not walk at all, and who knitted vests and stockings. It was by going to order some vests and socks for my men that I had made the acquaintance of Mère Tricottin, as she was called. At her request I had engaged her grandson, Victor Durieux, as an errand boy, and the poor old woman had been so grateful that I did not dare go now to tell her of his death. My petite dame went for me to the Rue de Vaurigard, where the old woman lived. As soon as Mme. Guérard arrived, the poor grandmother could see by her sad face that something had happened.
“Bon Dieu! my dear lady, is the poor little maigrotte dead?”
This was her name for me. Mme. Guérard then told her, as gently as possible, the sad news. The old woman took off her spectacles, looked at Mme. Guérard, wiped them and put them on her nose again. She then began to grumble violently about her son, the father of the dead boy. He had taken up with some low girl, by whom he had had this child, and she had always foreseen that misfortune would come upon them through it. She continued in this strain, not sorrowing for the poor boy, but abusing her son, who was a soldier in the Army of the Loire. Although the grandmother seemed to feel so little grief, I went to see her after the funeral.
“It is all over, Mme. Durieux,” I said, “but I have secured the grave for a period of five years for the poor boy.”