Elevated Minds

In 1808, M. de Grandpree and M. le Pique quarreled over an actress who was supposed to be the former’s mistress but got caught in a compromising position with the latter. Because, they said, they had “elevated minds,” they agreed to fight an elevated duel. From a field next to the Tuileries, they rose up in a pair of hot-air balloons, each with a second and a supply of blunderbusses, since pistols wouldn’t have been up to the job. A great crowd gathered to watch what they thought was a balloon race.

The wind stood fair from the north-northwest. The balloonists managed to stay within roughly eighty yards of each other, and when they’d risen to about twenty-five hundred feet, M. le Pique fired and missed. M. de Grandpree fired back, apparently not at his opponent but at the more obvious target, his balloon. It dropped like a stone and smashed the duelist and his second to pieces on the housetops.

Triumphant, the victor soared majestically off into the sky, descending unhurt some twenty miles away.