CHAPTER X.THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR.
The most popular man in Europe in the year 1783 was still the United States Minister to France.

The figure of plain Benjamin Franklin, his broad head, with the calm, shrewd eyes peering through the bifocals of his own invention, invested with a halo of great learning and fame, entirely captivated the people's imagination.
As one of the American Commissioners busy with the extraordinary problems of the Peace, Franklin might have been supposed too occupied for excursions into the paths of science and philosophy.

But the spaciousness and orderly furnishing of his mind provided that no pursuit of knowledge should be a digression for him.

So we find him, naturally, leaving his desk on several days of that summer and autumn and posting off to watch the trials of a new invention; nothing less indeed than a ship to ride the air.

He found time also to describe the new invention in letters to his friends in different parts of the world.
On the 21st of November Franklin set out for the gardens of the King's hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of Paris, with a quickened interest, a thrill of excitement, which made him yearn to be young again with another long life to live that he might see what should be after him on the earth.