As soon as the Moon had risen, I would leave my room, dreaming, as I walked through the forest, of the success and conduct of my enterprise. Finally, on Midsummer's Night, as a council was being held in the fort to determine whether to aid the savages of the country against the Iroquois, I went out alone, to the top of a little mountain that lay behind our habitations. This is what I did: With the aid of a machine which I had built, and which I imagined capable of lifting me as high as I wanted, I threw myself into the air from the top of a rock. But because I had not taken all of the proper precautions I landed roughly in the valley. Completely scraped as I was, I returned to my room, without, however, losing heart. I took some marrow from a cow bone, and greased my body from head to toe, for I was grievously scraped up. And after having taken new heart with the help of some brandy, I went back to find my machine. However I could not locate it, since some soldiers who had been sent into the forest for firewood to light the scaffolding erected for Midsummer's Night had come across the machine and had taken it back to the fort. After some speculation as to what it might be, they noticed that it was powered with a spring. This gave them the idea that they might attach it to some rockets. Once the rockets were fired, the speed of their flight, combined with the spring mechanism which moved the wings, would give the entire apparatus the appearance of a great fiery dragon.
I searched long to find my machine and finally came across it in the middle of the main square of Quebec, just as they were setting fire to it. The pain at seeing my own creation placed in such a great peril overwhelmed me to such an extent that I ran over and seized the arm of the soldier who was lighting the fire. I grabbed the torch from his hands and leapt angrily into the machine in order to break up the system of rockets which adorned it. However I arrived too late, for as soon as I had both feet inside the machine I was taken up into the clouds.
The awful terror which overtook me did not so completely stun the faculties of my soul that I have failed since to remember everything that occurred during this instant. Thus I can tell you that they had set up rockets, linked together in casings in rows of six. The flame overtook the first row which then set off the one above it, and so on. The peril caused by the explosion decreased as the flame moved away from me and failed to ignite the entire bonfire. Yet just as I had resigned myself to leaving my head on the top of some mountain, I felt that, though I was not being shaken I was nonetheless rising. My machine suddenly took its leave of me and I watched it fall back to Earth.
This extraordinary occurrence filled me with such an uncommon joy that, ecstatic at having been saved from certain danger I had the impudence to philosophize on what had happened. As I was looking about with my eyes and my mind for the cause of this miracle, I noticed that my skin was swollen and still slick from the bone marrow which I had daubed on it to protect the scrapes I had endured upon my first fall. I recalled that when the Moon is waning it sucks the marrow out of the bones of animals. It was the Moon which was drinking the marrow which I had smeared over myself. And the nearer I drew to it, the stronger became the attraction, such that not even the clouds between me and the Moon could decrease its strength.
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