The story begins in countryside near Vienna in 1791. The hero sees a runaway hot-air balloon with a distressed lady inside crying for help. He pursues it, never having seen such a thing before. The family look after him for a while in return for his part in the rescue and he reads a book concerning flight. He already has a fascination with birds and how they fly. Through the family, the Morettis from Italy, he meets an existing experimenter in human flight, Irma Moretti's fiance, Jakob von Degen, and is invited to a public demonstration of his flying machine.