Presently the balloon dwarfed the town's granary and strained at its moorings. Mercier stood in a window of the gondola, already two stories above the ground.

"Adieu, Deer Lick! Bon chance!" he shouted as his denizens cast off. A cheer erupted, rising in the sky as his companion.

Mercier cupped his hands. "Hugh Gregory! Already I think you Americans understand la vie – life. All you must do is learn to live in it!"

Hugh watched as the great airship became a lone cloud and listened as hoof-beats faded into the lazy, buzzing calm. He glanced down at the book. A bit of foolscap protruded, so he opened the volume to where it lay. On it was a passage that his savior had translated:

When one considers the chastity of their morals, the simplicity of their manners, their habits of work and the religious and settle spirit which prevails in the United States, one is tempted to believe that the Americans are a virtuous people; but when one considers the commercial fervor which seems to devour the whole of society, the thirst for gain, the respect for money and the bad faith in business which appears on every side, one is soon led to think that this pretended virtue is only the absence of certain vices, and if the number of human passions seems restricted here, it is because they have all been absorbed in just one: the love of wealth.

Hugh Gregory was no less puzzled about what lay before him – in his environs, his dealings, and his coming marriage.

Nonetheless, his spirits were lifted.