Figure to yourself my surprise, therefore, when he turned to me suddenly in appeal, and, with a hand that trembled on my arm, besought me to take him away.
"I cannot stand it, my dear Lacroix—it isn't safe!" he said, in a low voice.
He repeated these words several times, his lip quivering like that of a child who suffers, as I led him into the drawing office of the ateliers. There he seated himself, bent and gray, upon the edge of an armchair.
"It's no use, I can't stand it," he said again. "I assure you that I could see the thing shaking, as it passed overhead, in every stick and wire of it. It can't be safe! And there she is, five hundred feet high, with her life hanging on a thread."
"I assure you also, monsieur," I protested, "that I have this very morning examined every nut and bolt, every brace and valve and stay in the entire appareil. Never have I permitted your daughter to ascend without such an inspection. I would stake my life upon the perfect integrity of the machine."
He smiled, a little querulously.
"You are accustomed to stake your life, Monsieur Lacroix. As for me, I am an old man. The old are obstinate and selfish. I abhor the entire proceeding."
Plaudits came from the gay crowd outside as mademoiselle's machine again roared above the hangars. The old man shook his massive head.
"Of course, you don't see it as I do," he went on. "If you had considered risks, you would have accomplished nothing. It is natural that you should think only of the glory and conquest of flight. But I think of the little girl I held on my knee the night her mother died, and I can neither stay away in peace when Ella flies, nor can I bear to watch her."
"But you are powerful, Monsieur Warren," I said, "a commander of the captains of finance. If you said even that a country should not make war, its cannon would rust in the parks, and its soldiers play leapfrog in the casernes. Surely you can bend the will of a young girl who is also your daughter?"