All these men and women, their deep in-born corruption momentarily transfigured by this enthusiasm for liberty, for equality, for sentiment, for austerity, which mingled oddly with their childish pleasure in all new things, in mesmerism, in America, in electricity, in montgolfier balloons, with their habitual pleasure in all their big and small futile and wicked pleasures of worldliness;-all these men and women, these morituri delighted at the preparations, the scaffoldings, red clothes, black crape, torches and drums and bugles, for their own execution, all assembled at that hotel of the Rue de Bourgoyne.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
The spot from which the brothers Joseph and Etienne montgolfier made the first air-balloon ascent, 3d June 1783, is indicated by a pyramid.
"The South of France--East Half"
Charles Bertram Black
It was inflated with hot air over a straw fire, and seven passengers were carried, including Joseph montgolfier and Pilatre de Rozier.
"The Mastery of the Air"
William J. Claxton