Decreased Pressure 971 



basket, still containing the larger part of the oxygen that had been 

 put into them. 



And so we see that the only means that could have averted the 

 terrible catastrophe which ended this ascension could not be used .... 



Commissioned by the Society of Aerial Navigation to aid the artist 

 who was to make the busts of the two unhappy aeronauts, we had 

 the coffins opened, on their arrival at the Gare d'Orleans, on Sunday, 

 April 18, at 11:45 in the evening, and I was struck by the state of 

 preservation of the features and the faces. 



I could almost have done without the disinfectants with which 

 I was furnished to facilitate the measuring of the faces 



Sivel had preserved his virile and energetic face; he showed no 

 sign of hemorrhage in mouth or nose; his face, slightly swollen, was 

 not cyanosed. 



Croce-Spinelli had his nostrils and mouth filled with blood which 

 we had to remove by repeated washing. On his forehead, his nose, 

 and his right cheek were blackish patches produced by the ecchymoses 

 resulting from bruises caused by the oscillations of the basket. Never- 

 theless, in spite of the blood which covered them, the lips did not 

 have the bluish tint characteristic of asphyxia, and the left side of 

 his face had almost preserved its normal color. 



The catastrophe of the Zenith profoundly moved our country; 

 everyone remembers the solemn funeral rites of the victims, the 

 tributes of political and scientific bodies, the open subscription for 

 the benefit of the families of Croce and Sivel, a subscription which 

 produced nearly 100,000 francs. May 23, in a great meeting, where 

 for the last time the eloquent voice of Pastor Athanase Coquerel, 

 Jr., was heard, I could say 16 in all truth: 



A month and a half has passed since the catastrophe of the 

 Zenith, and in our country, unjustly accused of frivolity and forget- 

 fulness, the emotion which it aroused is not yet calmed. 



This is a remarkable fact upon which we should dwell. Every 

 day the newspapers bring us accounts of terrible disasters, floods, 

 explosions, fires, shipwrecks, which cost the lives of scores, of hun- 

 dreds of men; it seems that our emotions should be stirred by these 

 and that the loss of two men should hardly affect them. Nay, more! 

 Our country, our heroic and unhappy country, has hardly completed 

 a period of sorrows and sacrifices, in which it mourned not only those 

 who died in her defense, but also those who, still alive, are now torn 

 from her; and yet we learn the death of two men, of only two men, 

 and all France trembles and mourns. 



That is because everything in this double death is strange and 

 sublime. Certainly Sivel and Croce-Spinelli are not the first aeronauts 

 whose loss science has had to deplore; their names are the last of a 

 list at the head of which shine the names of two other scientists, 

 Pilatre du Rozier and Romain, who were dashed to pieces on the 

 beach of Boulogne in 1785. But the death which had struck these two 

 aeronauts was a well-known death, foreseen, common in a way; a 



