" Here is her letter:
"Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight, absorbed
in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora--la belle
Aurore, whom I begin to hate. Instead of anchoring,--I had set
out the guide-light above our roof, so he had but to descend and
fasten the plane--he wandered, profoundly distracted, above the
town with his anchor down! Figure to yourself, dear mother, it is
the roof of the mayor's house that the grapnel first engages!
That I do not regret, for the mayor's wife and I are not
sympathetic; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears
it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top
of my voice. Little Victor in his night-clothes runs to the
window, enormously amused at the parabolic flight without reason,
for it is too dark to see the grapnel, of my prized tree. The
Mayor of Meudon, thunders at our door in the name of the Law,
demanding, I suppose, my husband's head. Here is the conversation
through the megaphone--Xavier is two hundred feet above us:
"'Mons.
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