The Aurora Borealis — The Balloon Ascent — In Mid-Heaven — Catastrophe.

THE disturbance of the magnetic needle had announced the coming of the Northern Lights, even before the sun had set, and the balloon was being filled with hydrogen gas, when the transparent green color, which is the unmistakable forerunner of an Aurora Borealis, appeared in the North. In a few hours more the preparations were completed. The atmosphere was limpid, the sky cloudless. The stars sparkled in a moonless heaven, brightened only in the magnetic regions of the North by a circle of soft light, which shot forth rosy and greenish flames that seemed like the throbbings of the heart of some unknown and mysterious being. The father of Iclea, who was present at the inflation of the balloon, had no suspicion of his daughter’s intention. At the last moment she entered the parachute as if for the purpose of examining it. Spero gave a signal and the balloon rose slowly and majestically above the city of Christiania, which, with its thousands of lights, gradually diminishing in size, soon disappeared from the gaze of the two aerial voyagers as they ascended into the dark regions of space. The balloon, taking an oblique direction, soared lightly above the dark regions below, whose lights paling gradually, soon disappeared from view. The noises of the city were at the same time lost in distance, and a profound silence, the silence of the upper regions, enveloped the aerial boat. Impressed by the strange stillness, and still more, perhaps, by the novelty of her position, Iclea clung to her intrepid companion. They were now ascending rapidly in the air. The Aurora Borealis seemed to descend toward them, spreading itself beneath the stars like a floating drapery of gold and purple, shot with electric lights. Spero, by the aid of a small glass globe containing glow-worms, took observations from time to time with his instruments, marking the degrees indicated by them as they ascended. The balloon continued to mount. What intense joy for the scientist! In a few moments they should reach the plane of the lights. He was about to solve the problem of the altitude of the Aurora Borealis, which so many famous scientists, chief among them his beloved masters, the two great “psychologists and philosophers,” Oersted and Ampère, had attempted to solve in vain. Iclea had recovered her calmness. “Are you then afraid?” her friend asked her. “The balloon is safe, there is nothing to be feared; every possible accident has been provided against; we shall descend in an hour. There is not a breath of wind blowing from the earth.”

“No,” she said, while a flame lighted up her figure with a transparent, rosy brightness. “I am not afraid, but it is all so strange, so beautiful, so divine; to me, in my insignificence, it seems sublime. I trembled for an instant. It seems to me that I love you more than ever —”

And throwing her arms around his neck she clasped him in a long and passionate embrace.

The solitary balloon sailed on through the aerial heights in silence, a globe of transparent gas enveloped in a frail, silken covering, of which they could descry, from the parachute, the vertical divisions meeting at the top around the ring of the valve, the inferior part of the balloon remaining wide open for the expansion of the gas. The “obscure brightness” of which Corneille speaks, shed by the stars, would have given light enough without the light of the Aurora Borealis, to distinguish the form of the aerial vessel. The parachute, suspended to the network enveloping the silken globe, was fastened by eight solid cords woven into the wicker-work surrounding it and passing under the feet of the aeronauts. The silence was solemn and profound; they could almost hear the beating of their hearts. The last sounds of earth had sunk into silence. They moved at a disiance of five thousand yards above the Earth, borne along with incredible swiftness by the upper current of the atmosphere, of which, however, they felt nothing, for a balloon is submerged in the moving current of air and remains motionless in it, as if it formed a part of it. Sole inhabitants of those elevated regions, our two travelers experienced in their novel situation, the exquisite happiness felt by those who breathe this pure and exhilarating atmosphere, and soaring above the world below, forget in the silence of space, all the meannesses of our terrestrial system. And they, better than any of those who have preceded them, were able to enjoy the charms of this unique situation, heightened tenfold by the feeling of their own happiness. They conversed in low tones as if they feared to be overheard by the angels, and that the magic spell should be broken that held them suspended near to Heaven. At times, sudden flashes, the lights of the Aurora Borealis, passed before their gaze, then everything returned to an obscurity more profound and more fathomless than before.

They continued sailing on, as in a dream, among the stars, when a sudden sound like a dull hissing greeted their ears. They l............