What I Saw
make me go back to Paris to finish my studies. That same night I ran to several booksellers; I bought all the books I could find about balloons and air travel.
⁂
Facing the oil engine, I had felt the possibility of making Jules Verne's fantasies come true.
Later, all in one piece, I owe my success to the petroleum engine.
I was fortunate to be the first to use it in the air.
My predecessors never used it. Giffard adopted the steam engine; Tissandier took with him an electric motor. The experience showed, later, that they had followed the wrong path.
⁂
One morning, in São Paulo, to my great surprise, my father invited me to go to the city and, going to a notary's office, had a deed drawn up for my emancipation. I was eighteen years old. Back home, he called me to the office and told me: "I have already given you
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