ment of extraordinary precision, indispensable to the calculations which he intended to make at the Congress of Turn-Severin.

The Servians, the Wallachians, and the Hungarians, with whom the deck of the steamboat was crowded, were

evidently very good-natured people, for Magloire had hardly concluded his explanation when they all set to work, bent double, to seek on all sides of them for the lost instrument, as eagerly as though they were looking for the crown jewels of Hungary.

The doctor, who was, as we have often said, the most good-natured man in the world, seeing all these people stooping down and busily seeking for something, naturally supposed that one of them had just iost an article of importance. His anger gave place to the instinctive desire to oblige one of his companions in misfortune, and, without knowing what they were looking for, he also doubled himself nearly in two, and went searching about the deck like the others, to the unspeakable amusement of Magloire, who laughed until he fairly cried. On board a French steamer his laughter would inevitably have betrayed the jester and brought him into trouble; but, on the Danube, Magloire was allowed to laugh without being questioned as to the case of his hilarity. Several passengers, more patient and obstinate than the others, were still looking for the lost instrument when the boat touched the landingplace.

Tourists who seek local colour in their travels ought not to go to Turn-Severin. There they will find nothing but a modern city of the European type, and as everybody has seen it just because it is that sort of place, we are fortunately dispensed from the obligation of describing it.

The only monument that at first attracts attention is a tower, now in ruins, which was built at the time of the Roman rule in Moesia, by a certain Severinus, governor of the said province. Hence the strange name of TurnSeverin bestowed upon the town by its founders.

A crowd, which might be called considerable, was collected to witness the landing of the delegate members of the Society of Saint-Pignon les Girouettes, France.

Who was the indiscreet person that had announced their arrival?

There is grave reason for suspecting Magloire. At all events, if it were not he, it assuredly was not Dr. Quiès, for the poor doctor responded more than languidly to the enthusiastic demonstrations with which he was received., He would have been much better pleased to be allowed to go quietly to his hotel and have his dinner as quickly as might be. He was, on the contrary, obliged to walk for the distance of two kilometers on the bank of the Danube in the company of Anthime and Magloire, and escorted by the crowd, before he reached the ruins of Trajan's bridge, the place selected for the interesting labours of the Congress.

One of the principal questions to be discussed had reference to these ruins.

The point to be debated was whether it was at this spot that the gigantic bridge, nine hundred feet in width, with twenty arches, each not less than one hundred and fifty feet in height and sixty in span, had been constructed by Apollodorus, of Damascus, at the command of Trajan. It was agreed that nothing short of the erudition of Dr. J. B. Quiès and M. Anthime Bonamy would suffice to solve this problem.

Such was the sense of the discourse addressed to our two savants by the president of the Congress, in the Roumanian tongue. Quiès, not knowing one single word of Roumanian, replied in French to the president's allocution, which he had not understood, and was enthusiastically cheered by the audience, who did not understand his

answer.

Observe, this happens in Wallachia! We are ready to give the flattest contradiction to any one who may venture to assert that a similar thing may happen elsewhere, and that a number of Frenchmen assemble every year at the Sorbonne, to applaud a Latin discourse of which they do not understand a word.

A speech, whether it be intelligible or not, is a painful thing, and wearisome to the ear of a famished hearer.

The president's address, although it lasted for only an hour and a quarter, seemed mortally long to Dr. Quiès, who concluded his own brief reply by begging for a few hours' rest. This boon was granted him, thanks to Magloire, who knew how to say in every language,—

"I am hungry! I am thirsty! I want to sleep!

Only for Magloire his unfortunate master would have had to submit to three or four more speeches that day.

The question of the authenticity of the ruins of Trajan's bridge was not the only one which was to be studied by the Congress at Turn-Severin. For that alone, a building which had cost a considerable sum, would not have been built, and hung with four hundred flags; nor would savants, journalists, and even photographers, have been induced to come from the four quarters of the world. Many other points were to be considered more or less exhaustively. All the branches of science were to be handled, and were handled, as the papers read at a public meeting on the following day proved :

1. By the Russian delegate, M. Poporoskoff, on Russia at the time of the Sarmatians, of the Roxclans, and of the Agathyrses.

2. By the Swedish delegate, on the electro-chemical properties of iridium.

3. By the Italian delegate, on the Customs' law of Lapland.

4. By the German delegate, on molecular attraction to the surface of the moon.

5. By the Dutch delegate, on the physical constitution of infusoria.

6. By the Spanish delegate, on refraction in the upper strata of the atmosphere.

7. By the Austrian delegate, on the lowering of temperature at different altitudes.

(The names of these six delegates have not been transmitted to us.)

8. Finally, by the French delegate, on the personal

merit of Dr. J. B. Quiès, and the works which he proposed to produce.

In matters scientific, however, it is not enough to talk; action is indispensable. Experiments of the most interesting kind were to be made upon questions No. 6 and 7 by the authors of the papers upon them. Those gentlemen were to ascend in a balloon to the height of 7000 yards, so as to confirm their statements upon refraction and the lowering of the temperature beyond risk of refutation.

The results of this costly operation seemed, however, to offer less of absolute certainty than might have been desired. As Quiès had correctly foreseen, there were several amateur savants at Turn-Severin, but real savants had stayed away.

That circumstance had, as we shall presently see, a lamentable influence on our hero's destiny.

The "Capricorn," so the balloon was named, which had been lying flat on the ground on the day of the doctor's arrival at Turn-Severin, had been inflated during the night, and was swaying about, secured by long ropes, in the middle of a boarded enclosure, when they came out of the place of meeting.

"Just to think," said Quiès to Anthime, pointing to the bobbing monster, "that there are fools for such follies!" "You would not feel any curiosity to-"

"I!"

Never in his life had the doctor heard so preposterous a question. He could not make any answer to it except that “I!” but the exclamation had more in it than all the papers which had just been read at the Congress.

Magloire, always greedy for novelty and excitement, looked at the balloon with a sigh. Most willingly would he have foregone six months' wages if thereby he could have procured for Dr. Quiès the renown of having as cended 7000 yards above the level of the sea, and its reflection upon himself.

The next day at noon-the hour fixed for the ascent