In their efforts to hold themselves straight, they looked like drunken men trying to maintain the perpendicular.

We have all read stories of some men deprived of the power of reflecting light and of others who could not cast a shadow.

But here reality, no fantastic story, showed you men who, through the counteraction of attractive forces, could tell no difference between light substances and heavy substances, and who absolutely had no weight whatever themselves! "Let us take graceful attitudes!" cried Ardan, "and imagine we are playing _tableaux_! Let us, for instance, form a grand historical group of the three great goddesses of the nineteenth century.

Barbican will represent Minerva or _Science_; the Captain, Bellona or _War_; while I, as Madre Natura, the newly born goddess of _Progress_, floating gracefully over you both, extend my hands so, fondly patronizing the one, but grandly ordering off the other, to the regions of eternal night! More on your toe, Captain! Your right foot a little higher! Look at Barbican's admirable pose! Now then, prepare to receive orders for a new tableau! Form group _a la Jardin Mabille!_ Presto! Change!" In an instant, our travellers, changing attitudes, formed the new group with tolerable success.

Even Barbican, who had been to Paris in his youth, yielding for a moment to the humor of the thing, acted the _naif Anglais_ to the life.